by D C Macey
Oskar hadn’t noticed when, but at some point the black 4x4 had disappeared. He didn’t care. All that mattered was he made it home in time.
Tyres screeched as his car halted outside the house. Jumping out of the car, he sprinted round the side of the house and carried on running for the beach and the jetty. He scanned the scene ahead of him. The big launch had come in with the tide and was now moored at the jetty head. Below the jetty and closer to shore, he could just make out his wife; the water was above her breast, his son’s head at her shoulder.
Even now, waves were washing over Magnus’ face. He could see Ida straining against her constraints trying desperately to keep their son’s face above water. And he could see her despair as she failed and realised finally that she was powerless to save her son - powerless to save herself.
‘Stop, stop, set them free,’ shouted Oskar as he ran on to the jetty. Two burley men barred his way; he struggled, to no avail.
Cassiter stepped forward as he watched Oskar fighting against the men. ‘Oskar, be calm now. Have you done what I asked? Have you brought it? Quickly now, time is against you.’
Oskar forced himself to stillness. ‘In my briefcase, here, take it. But hurry, please, my family are drowning.’
‘Let me see,’ said Cassiter, taking the briefcase and looking inside. He looked up and smiled dryly towards Oskar. ‘Well done, that wasn’t so hard was it? Though I thought you might have been a bit quicker than you were.’
Oskar struggled free of the two men as Cassiter signed he should be released. He ran out along the jetty, peering over the side as he went. His son’s head was beneath the water now, his wife’s disappearing under the waves as they washed over her, then reappearing, wet and desperate.
‘Let them go, you promised. Please, I have done as you asked, free them,’ shouted Oskar.
‘No, no, Oskar,’ said Cassiter, walking steadily behind him. ‘I said you could free them, don’t you recall?’
‘What? How?’ Oskar’s voice was rising in panic. ‘I did what you asked. Help me free them. In God’s name, help!’
Cassiter stood still and smiled. Did you think to bring a knife? I’m sure cutting their bonds would be the quickest way.’
With a cry of exasperation, Oskar leapt into the water beside his wife and struggled to pull her head up. He could tell his Magnus was already gone. Momentary relief came for Ida in a little trough between waves, she looked into his eyes - he could see fear and questions, and most of all grief for Magnus. He ducked under the water, tried to free her; squinting through the clear stinging saltwater, he frantically searched for the knots. Then stopped, knew there was no hope. She was cable tied; he could never undo them. He felt his wife shudder, her chest heave, heard the desperate gurgle reach him from beneath the water; knew it was all over for her. A rage filled him; that man would pay now.
Oskar pressed his feet against the bottom and pushed up for the surface. Revenge: that was all that mattered. He didn’t surface. For a moment he puzzled, wondered what was happening. Then he registered the downward pressure of something gently pressing between his shoulder blades, holding him beneath the water, pushing him down, pinning him against the sandy bottom. He struggled, tried to twist, failed. A firmly held boat hook trapped him as the breath in his lungs flowed out in a cry of rage and despair.
He struggled but in the end couldn’t resist the need to breathe, and by agonising degrees, cold salty water forced itself into his lungs. He was drowning. Fingers clenching, releasing, arms reaching out and back in a futile attempt to free himself. His neck arched, instinctively struggling to raise his head towards the surface, and he saw his Ida; just a metre away, her hair wafting in slow motion with the water’s flow, he saw Magnus. He saw death. Oskar shuddered, sucking more water into his lungs, suddenly the struggle eased, he couldn’t force the water out, didn’t care - and he was gone.
Oskar never saw the man and his colleagues step on to their launch. He never saw their faces as the launch powered away, all content with a job well done. He never saw the horror on the faces of local fishermen who came down to fish his beach that afternoon.
CHAPTER 14 - WEDNESDAY 21st AUGUST
Helen stepped out of the solicitor’s office, satisfied she had done all that she could. Time and tide wait for no woman, and several increasingly anxious telephone messages from Franz Brenner in Switzerland had propelled her to visit the solicitors who represented his bank in Edinburgh.
The nature of its coming meant she could muster no personal interest in her new gotten wealth, but Franz had insisted there were things she needed to know about her inheritance and now really was the time. MacFarlane, Crearer and Cromarty was a long established partnership. She did not know too much about Scottish solicitors but she had found easy confidence in David Cromarty and the firm.
Everything about the partnership spoke of permanence. The address in Charlotte Square, she knew that was as prestigious as it comes. The shining brass plate, long ago rubbed almost smooth by a hundred years and more of polishing. The reception, spacious and populated by an array of comfortable yet well-worn leather chairs, the coffee table sporting a broad selection of the day’s newspapers. Partners and staff passing through, confident, unhurried, purposeful.
While waiting in the plush reception she had caught a snatch of the telephone conversation between the receptionist and Mr Cromarty’s secretary. She was quite certain they had referred to young Mr Cromarty. And having now met the man, she guessed David Cromarty was sixty if he was a day. How old was old Mr Cromarty?
It had been a useful meeting, far more informative than she could ever have imagined. She read and signed the various papers David had prepared for her, and then it became clear that the range of her financial powers exceeded even her wildest imaginings.
He slid a brace of plain, unremarkable bankcards across the table to her. ‘These cards came direct from Franz Brenner and the bank in Switzerland. You must sign them in my presence, now. And I must caution you to be careful with these, they are very high value.’
‘Oh, what do you mean?’ said Helen.
David gave a smile. ‘Helen, with my card I book a nice hotel room. With your card, you book the whole floor. I book a flight, you charter the plane, no questions asked. So do be careful how you use them.’
She had been just a little startled when David broke off to take a phone call; and again when he flicked his handset to loudspeaker, telling her he had Franz Brenner on the line: a quick conference call.
She left the meeting confident that while she and her friends faced real danger ahead, she was bolstered by good people who would support her. She knew she could count on them and had left David and Franz to come up with a solution to her housing problems. She had also promised, at last, to visit Switzerland; she would book flights today and let Franz know when she was to travel.
Though she would never admit it, she had been avoiding visiting Franz Brenner in Switzerland. Probably because it would cement the transition from John Dearly to herself and, deep down, she desperately wished things had gone differently, and that her predecessor had somehow survived.
• • •
DCI Wallace looked around the reception area, another killing, another mystery. This was a strange one. Killings of migrant workers were very rare. The few such crimes he had been involved with tended to be focused within tightly knit groups. In his experience, the motivation was often simple and frequently it involved money. The dead woman’s purse was still in her locker, only metres from where she had died. Theft was not the motive.
It was a puzzle. He had read the initial report his detectives had submitted the previous day. Something had niggled at him so now he’d decided to take this one on himself. According to various witnesses, the cleaner had been seen busy with her cleaning trolley at the same time as she lay dead in the basement. And now this. He drummed his fingers on the visitor log for the day of the killing. Sam Cameron had visited. He would need to visit him and that nice Ame
rican girl, again. They seemed in the thick of it once more.
‘Tell me again,’ he said to the man sitting behind the reception desk.
‘As the book says, Mr Cameron came in around 09.30. He had an appointment with Sandi McLellan, went to the meeting, he left about 10.30 and never came back. Oh, and his assistant came late. Got here just after he’d left, about 10.35, I would guess. She missed the meeting so I gave her Sandi’s email details so she could send an apology.’
‘What was her name? I don’t see an entry for 10.35. She’s not in the visitor book,’ DCI Wallace fixed the man with an accusing stare.
‘No, she wouldn’t be. She only came into reception. People only need to sign in if they are going beyond this point.’
DCI Wallace tapped the visitor book and growled. He looked at DS Brogan. ‘Get this bagged. Do we have any CCTV?’
‘Nothing for the cleaner’s stores.’
‘Damn, it’s a mystery how the cleaner could be dead on the floor and cleaning elsewhere at the same time.’ He looked expectantly at the man behind the desk.
‘There’s one camera, it might have something,’ said the man.
‘Can we see it?’ said Wallace.
‘I can make you a copy from here.’
‘Good, I’ll pick it up from you in a little while,’ said DS Brogan.
‘So we’ve virtually no pictures. This is not going to be easy.’
‘And there were scores of people in the building that evening for a Festival performance. Some of the visitors had pre-purchased tickets; some paid cash. It will be hard to trace everybody. Only thing out of the ordinary that night was one of the lecturers has complained her office had been disturbed.’
‘A theft? Do you think it’s linked?’ said DCI Wallace.
‘She’s not actually sure anything was stolen, perhaps she was mistaken.’
‘Well we’d better go up and speak to her, be on the safe side. What’s her name?’
‘Sandi McLellan.’
‘What? Wait.’ DCI Wallace turned and looked at the receptionist. ‘The book says that’s who Sam Cameron visited, am I right?’
The man nodded.
‘Come on Brogan, let’s go and speak to this Sandi McLellan. Then I want to call on our friends at the church.’
• • •
Helen stood over the manse’s kitchen table, palms flat on the top, thumbs hooked under its edge. She leant further forward, pressing her weight on to her arms, locked elbows holding her steady as her head slowly turned from side to side, surveying the documents and pictures spread before her. Francis and Elaine sat at either end of the table; they too looked carefully at the spread.
From his place opposite Helen, Sam tried to shape their knowledge into something meaningful. ‘I have tried to unpick this muddle from every possible angle and I just don’t make any progress. We started with one puzzle - what do the inscriptions on the daggers mean? I don’t know, but we don’t have all the daggers yet so perhaps it will become clearer with future finds.’
Sam paused, looked for agreement, both Helen and Elaine nodded.
‘Then we have a whole new puzzle - what do the glazed images mean? We made a start on working that out. The pictures represent saints and each saint represents a church. But where are the churches? The ones we have located have been by chance. But there are thousands of possible candidate churches scattered across Europe. It will be a huge task to track the right ones down and even if we eventually approach the right churches we will never know - they will be hiding their part in this too, that’s if the knowledge has even survived.’
The group had all listened intently to his introduction hoping for enlightenment. None had come. In particular, Francis was struggling to incorporate all the strands of recent finds with his original understanding. ‘Sam, I must be getting old and slow but please take me through this again, I’m not getting a handle on it at all.’
‘Okay, try this. Xavier told us before the summer that the patterns on the dagger blades form a message or map of some sort. We can’t decipher it at present; to do so requires those daggers we don’t yet have.’
Francis nodded acknowledgement. ‘I’ve got that bit. And that we believe the villains started out with one dagger of their own, which means one of them must be a task bearer; like Xavier and John Dearly before he was killed. And heaven knows how we could hope to get that dagger from them.’
‘Right,’ said Sam. ‘But we know more than that now and I think we are approaching this from the wrong angle.’
‘How so?’ said Helen.
Sam paused to collect his thoughts for a moment. ‘So, we know from Xavier that there were nine daggers in total, one stayed here at St Bernard’s, the key dagger. The others were distributed in secret by Henri de Bello. Each one kept safe, hidden by trusted knights, the task bearers. Clearly, that bit worked well since here we are today still trying to unpick his secret.
‘Each task bearer should have been established in a church in a particular place, waiting to be recalled. Their task passed on from priest to priest over the years. Xavier is a task bearer and he knew the name of Henri de Bello as the originator - now we’ve even found a gravestone for him, so I’m taking that as validation of the story. And John Dearly was the task bearer here at the hub, which involved some added responsibility or secrets. When John died, he passed his responsibility to Helen but couldn’t brief her. So she has all the responsibility but none of the knowledge.’
Sam reached across the table and picked up a copy of the Hereford codex picture, held it up. ‘Let’s assume the daggers provide the ultimate answer, then we’ve been trying to solve a riddle by combining parts of an answer, without ever knowing what the riddle was we are trying to solve.’
Elaine’s face was as inscrutable as ever, she was staring at her hands, and Francis’ face was pained as he struggled to understand what Sam was saying. Helen remained resting her weight on her locked arms but tilted her head to catch Sam’s eye.
‘Surely we know the question, Sam. It’s, where is the Templars’ hoard hidden?’ said Helen.
Francis’ face relaxed a little, recognising his own understanding in Helen’s words.
‘Yes, you’re right as far as you go,’ said Sam. Francis smiled in relief and Elaine’s head nodded very slightly. They all understood.
‘But you only go so far,’ said Sam.
Francis groaned and slapped his head. ‘Save us all, Sam. Please join the dots before my head explodes.’
Sam grinned at him. ‘I think we are looking at a multi-layered puzzle, an onion if you will. And we have started from the inside, it’s no wonder we can’t see what’s going on or solve it, we’ve bypassed much of the riddle. I think the daggers are the last stage, and we stumbled on them by chance.
‘Helen, you remember telling me that John Dearly had told you how important the glass was? I think he knew it was a message that identified the churches where the daggers were being held.’
‘So John Dearly had all the answers then?’ said Helen.
‘I don’t think so. Remember, again, what Xavier told us before the summer. He believed the keeper of John’s dagger had the responsibility and role of calling all of the daggers back together when the time was right, but he also said the Templars’ idea was that no man knew the whole story. So John couldn’t have known everything.’
Elaine looked up. ‘That’s right and remember Xavier’s story about his and John’s predecessors meeting by chance? That would not have been a chance meeting if one man had known where the other church was.’
‘Exactly,’ said Sam. ‘I think there are three stages to the puzzle. Initially, we have been tackling the daggers, but that’s the final stage - building the map or plan to the treasure. It can’t be pulled together without first sorting the two earlier stages. One of those was the names of the churches where the daggers were to be kept. That’s what John Dearly knew and guarded here, in the glass picture. You know, I think that was the second stage in
the puzzle.’
‘And what would the first be?’ said Helen.
‘Well that’s it, you see. In the end, it’s the same question circling back time and again. Where are the daggers?’ Sam raised a hand and began finger listing the items as he spoke. ‘Stage one, where are the daggers, that is the place - town, country, whatever. Stage two, where are the daggers in that place - the church names, we know those now. And of course, stage three, gather in the daggers from those locations and combine them to assemble the message engraved on the dagger blades.’
Hand still up and with the three fingers raised, he looked around. ‘Well? Any thoughts?’
Francis still looked confused as Sam let his hand drop.
After a moment’s contemplation Helen spoke. ‘So, three layers to your puzzle onion. The first tells where the daggers went, of that we have no idea at all. The second where the daggers stay in those places, their addresses if you like, we have a pretty good handle on that now through the church window. The third is what the daggers tell us, the map. To find the daggers and solve the problem we have to find specific churches and we don’t have the slightest inkling how to do that because we don’t know what the first layer of the puzzle is.’
‘Precisely,’ said Sam.
‘So we’re still stuck,’ said Helen.
‘Yes, but look on the bright side, at least we’ve moved on, now we’re stuck in a different spot. And I think it’s clear that whoever else is in the hunt is in the dark too. Like us, they are in the middle of the puzzle, perhaps not even knowing there is an outer layer that will direct them to where they need to go to find the daggers.’
