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

       ? s A a l

      Then compared them to the card she had found in amongst the flowers:

      T

      MALA

      MARTYR

      She took her pen and wrote the word ‘Mala’ in her notebook, crossing out the letters to see what she was left with.

      Assuming the ‘T’ was the Tau, it left just three letters – s, k and A, and two symbols – ‘+’ and ‘?’. She stared at them, wrote down one final word and the last two symbols, then read what she had written.

       T + ?

       Ask Mala

      The positioning of the underlined symbols made it look right. So did the capital letters at the beginning of each word. Was this the message her brother had sent her? It made some sense. The T was the Tau, the symbol of the Sacrament, and the plus sign could be a cross. The question mark symbolized the mystery of its identity, leaving the remaining two words reading like an instruction – ‘Ask Mala’. She looked up at the Ruinologist.

      ‘Who are the Mala?’ she asked.

      Miriam looked up from the notebook where she had read the words as Liv had written them. ‘I told you that, in the beginning, there were two tribes of men,’ she said. ‘One of them was the Yahweh, the men of the mountain. The other was the outcast tribe who believed the Yahweh had stolen the Sacrament and, by imprisoning it, had usurped the natural order of things. They believed the Sacrament should be discovered and set free – this tribe were called the Mala. They were persecuted by the Yahweh, their people hunted and killed for the beliefs they held. But they kept their faith alive and a secret church grew, even in the shadow of the mountain’s ascendancy. By the time the Yahweh did their deal with the Romans to ‘rebrand’ state religion, they had bled their poisonous hate of the tribe into the language – in Latin ‘mala’ means ‘evils’. But even though the Citadel demonized these people, and burned their chapels and confiscated and destroyed their sacred texts, they could not destroy their spirit.’

      Liv felt her skin tighten. ‘Do they still exist?’ she asked.

      Miriam opened her mouth to answer but her eyes shifted suddenly upwards. Liv twisted round, saw a large man appear behind her, silhouetted against the bright sky. Her eyes adjusted to the glare and his features began to take form within the darkness of his outline, eyes first – pale, and blue, and staring straight into Liv’s. A nervous tremor fluttered in her chest as she realized who it was.

      ‘Yes,’ Gabriel said. ‘Yes, we do.’

      95

      From where Kutlar stood he could see the whole of the embankment curling around the base of the mountain to a row of stone buildings in the distance promising all kinds of spa treatments to heal and revive.

      ‘She’s not here,’ he said.

      Cornelius let go of the gun in his pocket. Kutlar was stalling, he was sure of it. He opened the notebook and looked at the wire-frame map of the embankment. The two arrows almost overlapped at the centre, pointing directly to where they now stood. ‘She is here,’ he said, removing his phone from his pocket and quickly copying in Liv’s number from the search box.

      He stepped forward and pressed the call button, dropping the phone down so he could listen for the sound of a phone ringing. He walked closer to the shrine, filtering out the murmur of the crowd, and heard something in front of him.

      He cocked his head to one side and his eyes caught a tiny movement as the sound came again. It was down on the ground, in amongst the flowers, buzzing like a large trapped bee. Cornelius squatted down and shoved his hand into the soft petals. His hand closed around the hard plastic case of a phone. It vibrated once more as he pulled it out, leaving a crater in the surface of the flowers. From his own phone he heard a robotic voice asking him to leave a message. He cut the call and scrolled through the menu of Liv’s phone, checking the call logs, the address book, the text messages. They were all empty.

      Someone had reset the phone and abandoned it.

      Miriam watched the bearded man walk quickly away from the shrine. She saw him stop by the far wall, talk to another man, and look down at something that appeared to be a small laptop. Gabriel was right. They had been tracking the girl’s phone signal.

      She reached into her pocket and pulled out her own phone. She headed off, towards the row of health spas and away from the men with the laptop. She switched her phone off, thought about dropping it into one of the bins that lined the moat wall, but slipped it back into her pocket and decided to leave town for a few days instead. She could always get rid of it later – depending on how things panned out. At least the girl was safe now. That was the main thing.

      The motorbike rumbled down the narrow cobbled streets weaving between the tourists and the food stalls. Liv wore no helmet and the wind whipped her hair across her face as she clung to Gabriel. She could feel the hardness of his body beneath his clothes, and her legs clamped involuntarily against him each time the bike bucked and slipped on the uneven street. The scent she had noticed so powerfully when they’d met less than twenty-four hours previously now wrapped itself round her again, washing over her in a slipstream of warm afternoon air. She realized now, as her head hovered level with his broad shoulders, and she resisted the urge to rest it there, that it wasn’t cologne as she had first thought, it was the smell of him, and it was delicious.

      She had no idea where they were headed, nor how she could contact anyone now she had no phone, nor anything about the man she now clung to. Nevertheless she felt strangely secure for the first time in days. There was something about his urgency that had compelled her to go with him. He made her feel as if everything he was asking her to do was for her, not for him. Like her safety was his only concern. And he belonged to the Mala. And if what she’d just discovered with the Ruinologist was true, the least she could do was take a leap of faith and go in the direction her brother had pointed her.

      Besides, she thought as the bike passed through the western gate and filtered into the traffic creeping round the inner ring road and heading out of the city, what else would I do?

      96

      Arkadian was sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked patrol car, staring at a line of stationary traffic when the switchboard picked up.

      ‘Ruin Police Division.’

      ‘Yeah, could you put me through to Sub-Inspector Sulley Mantus,’ he said.

      ‘Who’s calling, please?’

      ‘Inspector Arkadian.’

      The line cut out and a tinny version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons counted away the seconds. The traffic had managed to move forward a whole car length by the time the operator returned.

      ‘Sorry, that line isn’t answering.’

      ‘OK, could you patch me through to his mobile?’

      The line cut out again. This time it went straight to answer-phone. Where the hell had he got to? ‘This is Arkadian,’ he said, his voice flat and annoyed. ‘Call me back immediately.’

      He hung up and stared out at the traffic-choked street. He’d called Sulley the moment he found out about the news-crew ambush at the morgue. He’d watched it on TV, Sulley practically dragging Liv past the cameras then shoving her into a police car like she was a suspect. He was going to tear him a new asshole when he got hold of him. Maybe Sulley suspected as much and that’s why he wasn’t returning his calls. The phone chirruped in his hand and he snapped it open. ‘Sulley?’

      ‘No, it’s Reis. I’ve got some news for you.’

      Arkadian