The Map

by T. S. Learner

  ‘The hair is human, I had it tested. We think it might even be the victim’s own hair,’ the detective said.

  August looked up startled, his mind spinning – in that case it must have been someone who knew Copps or at least had access to the apartment. The housekeeper? A secret mistress or perhaps male lover? August had never been entirely sure of the professor’s sexual proclivities.

  ‘The housekeeper has been ruled out as a possible suspect,’ the detective went on, reading the question in his eyes.

  August hesitated then decided he might as well be honest. ‘I’ve seen something like this before, in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, when I was a student. In the section that covered magic, ritual and belief – I used to go there when I was researching my degree. It’s like a voodoo totem, an effigy made in the form of the victim as a means to control or inflict pain on the subject.’ But encased in display cases, those absurd dolls were stripped of all their potency, yet this one is alive, throbbing, I can sense the danger. Despite his disgust, August kept his expression neutral.

  ‘I’m aware of the hypothesis,’ the detective replied, dryly. ‘Whether it actually works is a whole other debate.’

  ‘Utter tosh, isn’t it, sir?’ The young constable glanced nervously at his superior. August and the detective, fascinated by the gawky figurine with its wispy silver hair, both ignored him. August lifted up the doll.

  ‘What about the clay, it has an unusual texture, it reminds me of something.’ He sniffed it. It smelled faintly burned and acidic. He’d smelled that smell before – after battle.

  ‘We think it’s a clay made from ground bone.’ The detective stared at August, a piercing look awaiting a response, one August knew from his own military training, the policeman would read and potentially use against him. August’s brain clicked into a professional detachment – survivor’s rule number one.

  ‘Human bone?’ He couldn’t help asking despite already knowing the answer.

  ‘An educated guess and a correct one. But this is the thing, sir. We think the ground bone might possibly have come from the victim himself.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘You were aware the professor had an artificial leg – the right one from the knee down.’

  ‘That’s right, a legacy from the First World War. At least that’s what us students were led to believe.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the strange thing. We did a little bit of research and there is no record of the professor ever having served in the Great War. But suppose he knew the doll was human bone, and with his knowledge of history, myths and symbols just suppose he thought he was staring at his own death. Now that would frighten anyone to death, don’t you think, Mr Winthrop?’

  Olivia stood in the doorway of the small corner shop and pretended to study the paltry display of sweets in the window – a few jars of ancient boiled sweets, a box of liquorice thick with dust: remnants of a world pre-rationing. She glanced back over at the terraced house, knowing that the American’s apartment was on the ground floor. Lights were on and she could see the three men silhouetted against the drawn blinds. She’d seen the policeman and his plain clothes companion enter the building and she had a strong idea why they were there. Such linear plebeian logic, she thought to herself. As if A always led to B, as if all could be materially explained. Not in her world and not when her world stretched its dark tendrils into theirs – those men standing so confidently inside those four brick walls, as though even the walls could protect them.

  She should have felt fear or at least a danger of entrapment, but if anything their proximity thrilled her. It made the whole pursuit of August Winthrop more sublime. She smiled to herself then caught sight of her reflection in the shop window. For a moment she was startled, it was like seeing her own mother staring back. Good, it’s what she needed, to transform her appearance. In an old winter coat with padded shoulders – a style dating from the early forties – her hair covered with a headscarf tied under her chin, her face bare, drawn and without make-up, she looked like a middle-aged housewife. Standing upright next to her was an old trolley half full of coal. There was nothing to distinguish her from a thousand other middle-aged women, a lower middle-class widow struggling with the freezing weather, her meagre coal allowance and rationing book. Utterly nondescript, she was completely invisible to them.

  ‘I could walk through walls,’ she said to herself. ‘Walk through those walls and kill them all if I wished.’ Her low voice frightened a passing cat that shot under a car, then crouching glowered back at her, its yellow eyes shining through the gloom. Ignoring it, she looked back across at August’s windows. Would they arrest him? She didn’t think they had enough evidence and it wasn’t what she planned. The professor had unwittingly provided the second jigsaw piece, but more importantly he had galvanised August into action. He’d lit the fuse and stepped back. Olivia couldn’t have planned it better herself.

  Poor Julian. An image came back to her of him forty years earlier standing on a moor, symbols written in goat’s blood across his naked shoulders, virile in his muscularity, his head thrown back against the wind. He’d been a believer then, beautiful, courageous and defiant and, in her own particular way, she had loved him. But her world did not tolerate betrayal. Not for science, not for the love of money and certainly not for academia. Funny how she’d never forgotten the shape and touch of his body under her hands – how ironic to discover the memory was still there reverberating in her fingertips after all those years.

  Now the shadows were moving across the pale orange block of the drawn blinds – they were leaving. Olivia stepped back into the doorway. The front door of the terrace house opened and the two detectives appeared. They stood for a moment on the step staring out into the bleak evening fog. The policeman clapped his hands against the cold, while the detective pulled out a pipe and stuffed the bowl with some tobacco then lit up – a sudden tiny flare against the white creeping fog. Then together they stepped out into the night.

  ‘What do you think, sir?’ Jones asked, turning to his companion.

  ‘I think he’s probably innocent, but he’s the best we’ve got so far.’

  They crossed the street towards the Black Maria parked at the opposite kerb. They walked right past Olivia without noticing her. She was right; she was entirely invisible to them. The younger man turned to his superior, and in that glimpse of his wide, pale, young face, she read his personality in a split second – his anxiety over a young pregnant wife now waiting at home for him, his desperate need to impress the older detective, the drive to be promoted.

  ‘Do you want me to set a man on the street, make sure he doesn’t do a runner?’ His young voice rang through the leaden air, his breath etched in white plumes.

  The older detective glanced up the road thoughtfully. Despite the occasional call-out for domestic violence and the illicit homosexual encounters that occurred in the local garden square, the area was remarkable only for the aura of middle-class reserve that seemed to envelop the horse chestnut trees like a fine net.

  ‘No, not tonight, I suspect he’ll stay put. He hasn’t the money to travel nor any reason. Besides, I don’t want to frighten him. His expertise might come in handy later.’

  ‘Expertise?’

  ‘Jones, didn’t you notice his pretty little collection, witchcraft, botanical voodoo and all sorts of whatnot?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he’s the killer, does it? I mean, he might have been visiting the professor about some research, like he said.’

  ‘I’ve got the feeling this won’t be the first and last murder of this type we’ll see.’

  ‘You think the killer might be a serial murderer?’

  ‘Perhaps. But why Professor Copps?’

  ‘Well, he wanted to shut him up, that’s for certain,’ the young policeman ventured.

  ‘Why do you say that, Jones?’

  ‘Because of the doll, sir. I read that as symbolic of wanting to stop the voice, like.’ He faltere
d, embarrassed by what might be seen as an absurd flight of imagination. ‘Sorry, sir, I got carried away.’

  They were now at the car and for the first time that evening the detective had a sudden instinct that they were being watched. He turned on his heels and stared down the narrowing barrel of the street, already partially obscured by the thickening fog. He could see no one, only some old dear dragging a small trolley of coal. Reassured, he turned back to Jones.

  ‘Not at all, Constable, not at all. I think you have a valid point. However, I suspect the professor was killed in pursuit of something, and I’m not convinced that the charming August E. Winthrop isn’t connected somehow. The fact that he was the last person to see the professor isn’t coincidental.’

  He tapped the contents of his pipe against the side of the car. The smouldering tobacco fell to the pavement. He shivered, thinking it was the cold. The arthritis in his right hand was playing up again. I’m getting too old for this job, he thought, as he climbed into the passenger seat. Surprised at the sudden silence, he looked over his shoulder. His companion was still outside looking back into the fog.

  ‘Are you coming, Jones? It’s freezing.’

  The constable shook himself out of his reverie. He thought he’d seen a shadow dart across the road, but nothing human moved that fast. Now convinced his imagination was getting the better of him, he turned back to the car.

  After they’d driven off Olivia parked her trolley against the kerb and walked over to where the detective had emptied out the contents of his pipe. How wonderfully careless people were of the small personal things that defined them, things that become imbued with their essence: fingernail clippings, wisps of hair, pipe tobacco that still held the very breath of the smoker, she noted, as she meticulously scraped the contents of the pipe into a small piece of paper and folded it up. Slipping it into her pocket, she glanced over at August’s window. The American was still up. Never mind, she could wait. She could wait all night if she had to.

  August remained at his desk until he’d heard the police car drive off. Shock pinned him there for a good half-hour. The image of the voodoo doll revolved slowly in his mind – both fascinating and utterly repellent. The idea that this deeply primitive object could have been the murder weapon of someone as refined and intellectually sophisticated as the professor seemed ridiculous. Was his murder linked to the chronicle? He’d only read the first section, but it gave him a feeling of vertigo undercut with something even more disturbing – a sense of premonition, as if he’d unknowingly embarked on a journey that was in fact predestined. The sensation had haunted him ever since Cecily had walked out of the apartment and Jimmy back into his life, and now this visit from the police. If he wanted to escape any further surveillance, he had to act swiftly. He had to take back control. I have to leave and I have to leave now. The desire to move, simply to grab what he needed and run burst through him.

  He leaped up and pulled down a large battered leather travel bag out of his wardrobe, one he had hauled all over Spain. He threw it onto the bed and opened an old tea chest that doubled as a chest of drawers. He lifted out two pairs of trousers, an old sweater, several pairs of underpants and a singlet, calculating what he would need for the damp chilly Basque weather. He folded the clothes into the travel bag, then threw in the rest of the cigarettes Cecily have given him – six packages in total – enough for a couple of months if he rationed himself. Then he packed his Rolleiflex camera and ten rolls of film. He zipped up the bag and after making sure the blinds and door were both securely closed, lifted the corner of the rug and prised up a loose floorboard. Hidden underneath was a small leather pouch and a bundle wrapped in an old oilcloth. He pulled out the leather pouch, blew the dust and spider webs off it and opened it. Inside were several sticks of stage make-up, powder, false moustaches, fake glasses and several wigs. It had been the disguise kit he’d travelled with during his time in occupied France. He tested one of the make-up sticks against his hand – a dark pancake he knew in minutes could transform his Anglo-Saxon appearance into one of an olive-skinned Mediterranean. The stick was still moist and usable. He sniffed the skin of his hand and was immediately transported back to a night in Nantes in 1942, in an attic of a brothel that was also a front for the resistance, with Germans searching the ground floor while he, armed with a mirror and his make-up kit, disguised himself beyond recognition, only to saunter down the stairs past the SS officers as a drunken French sailor who just got laid. Maybe that’s where the chameleon is most comfortable, hiding under the skin of another. He packed the stick away, reassured he would have the means to disguise himself if necessary.

  He placed the make-up kit next to the travelling bag then hauled out the bundle and, sitting back on the floor, unrolled it slowly. Inside was a hunting knife with a gleaming oiled blade, a medal the Republican Army of Spain awarded him for the Battle of Jarama and his Mauser semi-automatic.

  He wrote out a cheque for three months’ rent for his landlady, then a letter to his publishers requesting an advance on his advance, then finally began a letter to Cecily. He got as far as the second sentence – ‘I have decided it would be better for both of us if I go away for a while and an opportunity has presented itself. I know this is difficult for you …’ – then realised it sounded too pompous and self-absorbed. He pulled it out of the typewriter and tossed it into the bin. She would just have to find the flat closed up. She was an intelligent girl, capable of drawing her own conclusions, he decided, fighting a fierce desire to ring her.

  Finally, he turned back to the chronicle. The rest of the untranslated book seemed to stare back up at him, taunting him, daring him to crack open those pages. He’d read so little and yet he was already about to embark on the same journey as the enigmatic Shimon Ruiz de Luna. He lifted the book and felt the thick waxy pages: there was a whole mystery trapped inside them that had been waiting for over three hundred years to be set free – had Shimon been guilty of witchcraft or merely political intrigue? Had he discovered Elazar ibn Yehuda’s great mystical treasure and, if so, would the chronicle reveal where it was? He would have to decipher and translate the rest as he travelled, he had no choice – like the physic himself, he too was about to be thrown into an extraordinary journey. It was either that or stay and face a possible murder charge and even more awkward investigation. He reached for the ink roller and the rest of the equipment he’d used to transcribe the chronicle, his mind made up. Outside, a blackbird suddenly began singing in the garden square opposite. Its nocturnal song reminded August of a night in the country he’d had once with Cecily.

  Cecily. A sadness rose up in him like unresolved grief. Perhaps this research would be a chance to confront his own demons, demons he’d failed to bury these last fifteen years. He knew that now, his own faltering career as an academic proved it, as did the increasingly shifting, jigsaw-like nature of his own identity. But to enter Spain was dangerous, the risk of arrest and possible execution was real. He knew he was still on the list Franco held for all International Brigade fighters who had managed to escape in 1936. The question was whether his old contact from Operation Comet, a man he’d never actually met in person, would help him get over the border in Basque country without the fascist Spanish police either arresting him or preventing him from entering. Again, he felt that dry excitement, the pounding adrenalin he used to get before a battle. He felt alive.

  He glanced at the clock: it was already four in the morning. If he left at seven, he should be able to catch the nine o’clock ferry to Calais. He walked over to the window and wrenched it open, allowing the freezing morning air to flow in. Outside, it was a waxing moon. Leaning out, August drank in the bluish light, illuminating the snow on the trees and ground. The ordinary transformed into extraordinary. It was ridiculous really, but he felt somehow reborn, as if he’d started stripping away everything that had kept him secretly fearful, secretly confined.

  Behind him the chronicle, catching a glint of moonlight, glowed in sudden luminosity.<
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  Tyson pulled open the hotel window and watched the traffic stream down Piccadilly. Ice crystals were already forming on the glass. It was a noisy moon that seemed to rattle the pane, its hollow bellow drilling straight into his brain. It reminded him of another moon just as demanding that had hung in another night – years ago in the hills of Biscay, where he had been told of the existence of something that until then he’d regarded as myth, an unobtainable mystery as fictional as mermaids or ghosts now made unexpectedly, palatably and thrillingly real, a mystery that could make him a god and one that later he had killed for. It was a night that had decided the rest of his life. He was jolted out of his reverie by the telephone ringing. Strolling across the Persian rug, he took his time before picking the receiver up. The voice at the other end was curt to the point of rudeness.

  ‘He’s getting ready to leave.’

  ‘Follow him. I want every movement. I want to own him, understand.’ Tyson put down the phone, heard its empty click against the papered walls. And now I will kill again for the same mystery, he thought to himself.

  It was still dark when August stepped out of the terrace a few hours later. The night was just dispersing and the smell of the approaching day hung between the thawing frost that iced the grass and the black lattice of tree branches. To August, with the weight of his travelling bag slung across his shoulder and the crisp fold of his passport pressed into his jacket pocket, it was the smell of adventure.

  She watched him walking towards the Tube entrance at the far end of the street. In a minute she would follow. She had prepared, she had an idea of where he was headed, but for now she would compress her presence into a faint silhouette, one that would follow at an invisible distance wherever he led her. And only when he had arrived, only when he had blindly led her to her goal in that unconscious naive manner of the uninitiated, would she make her move.