The Doomsday Prophecy. Scott Mariani

of the Bodleian reading rooms. He filled his lungs with the smell of the old city.

      ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said quietly to himself.

       Chapter Eight

       Greece The fourth day

      ‘Is this line secure? I have to talk to you.’

      ‘It’s secure. Why haven’t you reported sooner, Kaplan?’

      ‘We’ve had a problem here.’

      A pause. ‘The girl?’

      ‘I’m afraid so.’

      ‘You killed her, didn’t you? You had strict orders to take her alive.’

      ‘She’s alive.’

      ‘Then what?’

      ‘She’s alive but she’s no use to us.’

      ‘You’re trying to tell me you screwed up.’

      ‘We had her, OK? She was right in our hands. But she was hard to catch. She was on a motorcycle. We chased her for about three miles, from the villa up into the hills. Those roads are twisty, and there’s a lot of forest. We tried to head her off, but she panicked. She went off the road, where we couldn’t follow. I left Ross and Parker in the vehicle and took Hudson with me. We went in after her on foot.’

      ‘And she got away.’

      ‘No. We got her. She didn’t get far before she came off the bike.’

      ‘What’s the damage?’

      ‘No serious external damage. A few cuts and grazes. But she suffered a head trauma, and that’s the problem. She was unconscious a long time, nearly thirty hours. Came round yesterday. But she has some kind of traumatic amnesia. She can’t answer our questioning, because her memory has blanked out.’

      ‘You’re sure you got the right person?’

      ‘One hundred per cent sure.’

      ‘How bad is she?’

      ‘We can’t really say. The amnesia might be short term.’

      ‘You’d better hope so. Have you any idea how serious this is?’

      ‘It’s under control.’

      ‘Doesn’t sound much like that from this end, Kaplan. If she doesn’t regain her memory soon, you’ll have to get her back here where there are proper facilities.’

      ‘There’s another small problem.’

      ‘You mean this gets worse?’

      ‘All her things have disappeared from the villa. We went there to collect everything. It’s not there any more. Luggage, papers. All gone. She wasn’t meant to be leaving until morning. It means we have to replan. It can’t look like an accident any more.’

      ‘Nice work, Kaplan.’

      ‘One more thing. There was someone at the party, some boyfriend, we think. He’d been hanging around. We didn’t think anything of it. But then at the party he spilled her drink just after Hudson spiked it. Looked deliberate.’

      ‘So he knows something. Who is he?’

      ‘Just a local guy, as far as we know. One of her many boyfriends. Probably married, so he was real discreet. The villa has a linked garage, and he always parked his Mercedes there where we couldn’t see it. Now we think he took her things away, in the car, earlier on. And we’re pretty sure she was RVing with him when we took her.’

      ‘So he could know everything.’

      ‘Basically. But there was no way we could have known that.’

      ‘You have any information at all on this person?’

      ‘We’re working on it.’

      ‘You’re going to have to rescue this situation quickly. We’re on the clock here. People will start to miss her.’

      ‘We’ll find him.’

      ‘You’d better. And when you do, you contain the situation. There might still be a chance of saving this mess. This goes up in smoke, you’re dead. Understand?’

       Chapter Nine

      Oxford The sixth day

      After two solid days of study, Ben felt ready to breathe some air again. The sun was shining through his window, and he felt the tug of the outdoors. Back in Ireland, he made a point of running ten miles every day.

      He put on jogging pants and a T-shirt and walked briskly into town, where he picked his way through the shoppers in Cornmarket and walked down towards his old college, Christ Church. Entering through the main gates, he found himself looking across the vast main quadrangle. He took a deep breath.

      He walked across the quad, gazing around him at the regal old sandstone buildings as they caught the gold of the sun. Distant memories flooded back. In the centre of the quad, surrounded by neat lawns and perched above an ornate stone fountain, stood the familiar statue of Mercury the winged messenger. He walked past it, trotted up some steps to the far side of the quad and headed for an arched entrance. Tucked away behind it was the smallest cathedral in England, which doubled as the college chapel. Ben hadn’t planned on going in, but now he felt himself drawn to the place. He slipped in through the door.

      At the far end of the cathedral, a morning service was in progress. Ben didn’t recognise the priest in the pulpit, but he was sure he’d be meeting him sooner or later in the course of his studies. The man’s voice was solemn and gentle as he read from the Gospel of St Matthew. His words echoed off the thirteenth-century columns and walls and drifted up to the magnificently ornate ceiling. The small congregation was clustered near the front, listening attentively.

      Ben stepped quietly across the polished mosaic floor, took a seat near the entrance and watched and listened from a distance. He tried to imagine himself standing there in the pulpit, wearing the dog collar and that earnest expression, conducting the service. That was his planned future up there: the role he was supposed to be preparing for, something that had been part of his life, on and off, for as long as he could remember.

      Sitting here now, it seemed hard to imagine. He’d wanted this thing so much, dreamed of it so often – but was it really within his grasp to make it happen?

      He stayed a few minutes longer in the cathedral, bathing in the soft light from the stained-glass windows, head bowed, letting the serene atmosphere penetrate deep inside him. Then he very quietly got up and slipped back outside into the sunlit quadrangle.

      He turned left and made his way towards the sprawling meadow behind Christ Church. He jogged for half an hour, making himself feel the burn in his calf muscles as he ran along the towpath by the river. Then, satisfied that he wasn’t letting himself become too unfit, he jogged back towards the college.

      He was so deep in thought as he walked back through the main quad that he didn’t see anyone approach.

      ‘I was hoping I might bump into you,’ a voice said.

      Ben turned and saw the tall, grey-haired, tweedy figure of Professor Tom Bradbury approaching. He hadn’t seen Bradbury since his interview six weeks before with the Faculty Admissions board.

      ‘Professor. How are you?’

      Bradbury smiled. ‘Call me Tom. I think we’ve known each other long enough for that.’

      Tom Bradbury and Ben’s father, Alistair Hope, had been at Cambridge together. The friendship between a devout