Absolute Proof

by Peter James

  ‘Mr Hunter?’ His voice was deep and resonant, and as posh as his name. He held out a liver-spotted hand.

  Ross shook it firmly.

  ‘Do sit down.’ He indicated the solitary, worn leather chair in front of his desk. ‘Coffee or tea?’

  ‘Coffee please.’

  ‘Two coffees, Sandra, thank you,’ he said to his secretary.

  The walls were bare, apart from a few rows of bookshelves, untidily stacked with legal tomes, and an ancient framed Admission Certificate from the Law Society. The grimy window looked out across the busy street.

  The solicitor peered hard at his face and Ross was aware he was looking at his eyes. The dark rings were less livid today, but still very noticeable.

  ‘Been through the wars, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘I walked into a door,’ Ross replied.

  ‘Of course – dangerous things, doors.’

  Both men smiled, aware the truth was different.

  ‘Terrible thing that happened to dear Harry,’ the solicitor said, changing the subject after settling into his chair. ‘I understand it was you who found him?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You hadn’t known him long?’

  ‘Just a few days,’ Ross replied. ‘Were you good friends?’

  ‘For over fifty years. I was godfather to his son – who was sadly killed in Afghanistan. I believe Harry told you?’

  ‘Yes, he said by friendly fire.’

  ‘He was very impressed with the piece you wrote in the Sunday Times about the lack of equipment supplied to our troops out there.’

  ‘He told me.’

  Anholt-Sperry gave him a wistful smile. ‘You need to know that Harry was a decent man. Genuinely concerned for the world.’

  ‘I got that impression.’

  ‘He spoke to me after meeting you, and he told me that he trusted you.’ He gave him that wistful smile again. ‘Was he right to trust you, Mr Hunter?’

  ‘I had been planning to tell him that I felt I wasn’t his man, if you want to know the truth. But he said something over the phone that intrigued me enough to give him another chance. That’s why I went to see him. Have you had any information from the police about who might have killed him?’

  ‘Not so far, other than that the preliminary postmortem report is that he died of heart failure – perhaps from the shock of being tortured. I have a contact in that force who’s promised to update me when they know any more. At the moment one of their lines of enquiry is that it’s a sadistic burglary – the intruders were obviously after something. Apparently, there’s been a bit of a spate in his area of this particularly nasty style of burglary, targeting vulnerable elderly people in rural dwellings, but that’s all I know for the moment. What my chum in the police did tell me was they haven’t ruled you out yet as a suspect.’ He gave Ross a sudden, hard stare.

  Ross felt a moment of unease. His fingerprints would have been in the house. He had a story that he had given the police. But what motive did they think he might have? He shook his head. ‘You can’t seriously think I would have done that? Why would I? He approached me out of the blue, eager for me to help him.’

  ‘So what was it he said to you over the phone that intrigued you enough to give him a second chance, Mr Hunter, and pay him a visit?’

  ‘He said that since we had spoken, when he first came down to see me at my home, he had found something he thought would change my mind about not helping him. He implored me not to dismiss him as a harmless old loony – his words – and to give him a chance to explain what he had found. I asked him what it was, but he said it was too dangerous – whatever he meant by that – to tell me over the phone.’

  ‘So you never found out?’

  ‘When I arrived at his house, I could see it had been ransacked. I probably shouldn’t have gone in – I know that.’

  ‘So, why did you?’

  ‘The police asked me the same question – why didn’t I call them immediately? The thing was, I didn’t know if he was inside or not. I was concerned he might be in there somewhere, lying injured. I know that my local force don’t respond at all to some burglaries – and it’s a crime that’s low down on their priority for a response. I thought it would be better to have a look first, myself.’

  The solicitor nodded. ‘Did you find anything of interest, before you discovered Harry?’

  ‘Actually, I did. I found something in a wastepaper basket in a room I presume was his office. I don’t know if it’s what his assailants were looking for – but I just have a feeling it might have been.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘When Dr Cook came to see me he gave me the compass coordinates he had been given for Chalice Well. In addition there was a series of numbers following these coordinates. I asked him what they meant and he said he had no idea.’

  ‘And these were?’

  Ross pulled out his iPhone, opened the Notes app and read out the numbers.

  Anholt-Sperry frowned. ‘How very interesting,’ he said after some moments. ‘Most interesting.’

  ‘I think he had finally worked out the meaning – and that’s what he wanted to tell me.’

  ‘And what was it you found in the wastepaper basket?’

  ‘A diagram, crudely drawn.’ Ross retrieved the crumpled square of paper from his wallet and laid it on the desk.

  The solicitor peered at it intently. ‘Looks like a hockey stick.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘And do you have any idea what the numbers mean?’

  Ross pulled up the photographs of the oak container and the vessel it had contained on his iPhone, and passed it across to the old man.

  Anholt-Sperry pulled on a pair of half-frames and studied the screen, flicking through the images. ‘You found these where Harry said you would?’

  ‘It took a little deciphering. They’re in a code based on the numbers of letters of the alphabet. Nine Metres South Turn Left. The well itself lies nine metres south and immediately to the left of the spot indicated by the coordinates. Harry, and whoever had dug there subsequently, had been looking in the wrong place,’ Ross said. ‘The cup was in a recess of the well, sealed in a container made of oak. I’m told by an antiques expert that, in his opinion, it could have survived in this container for a thousand years or more. Maybe much more.’

  ‘Good Lord. You are aware what this vessel is – or might be?’

  ‘I am. So is someone else, who tried to kill me.’

  ‘Who closed a door in your face?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘But you are a resourceful young man.’ The old man’s demeanour had totally changed. ‘This is incredible. Quite incredible. Do you understand the significance of this find? For the world?’

  ‘I do.’

  He thought, for a moment, that Anholt-Sperry was going to come round the table and hug him. The solicitor looked almost delirious with happiness. ‘You have it in a secure place – away from our enemies?’

  ‘The chalice and the container are in a secure storage unit in Shoreham. The manuscript that Dr Cook gave me is in my solicitor’s vaults in Brighton.’

  ‘He was right to trust a young man. I’m old, you see.’ He patted his chest. ‘Ticker problems, like Harry. I’m fine for now. But you never know, do you? And should, God forbid, anything happen to you?’

  ‘I’ve instructed my solicitor to give my wife the code to the storage unit and to tell her where the key is located.’

  The secretary brought in their coffees on a tray. Ross took his cup, gratefully, blew on it and drank.

  ‘What I don’t understand, Mr Hunter, is why the compass coordinates only gave the approximate location, and it required the deciphering of the numerical code to find the exact spot. Do you have any thoughts?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot. The best answer I can come up with is that if the location of the Holy Grail was indeed given to him from God as he claimed, perhaps the numerical code was put in as an added l
evel of security.’ He raised his hands in the air.

  The solicitor nodded, approvingly. ‘I think Harry was right to trust you, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And are you willing to investigate further, based on this?’

  ‘I was followed by someone to Chalice Well. And attacked in the process. Dr Cook has been tortured and murdered. If the two are connected, it’s a pretty daunting situation. My wife is pregnant and I have to consider her and my unborn child.’

  ‘You’d put them ahead of saving the world?’

  Ross stared at the old man. He saw the same sincerity, the same zealousness in his eyes as he had seen in Harry Cook’s the first moment they had met.

  It is very good of you to see me, Mr Hunter. You do understand that you and I have to save the world?

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if I did,’ he replied.

  Anholt-Sperry smiled his sad, wintry smile. ‘That’s why you were chosen.’ He reached across his desk and handed him a small square of paper, of similar size to the one that Cook had given him previously, with the compass coordinates for Chalice Well.

  Ross looked down at the numbers.

  25°44'47.1264"N and 32°36'19.1124"E.

  The coordinates were followed by a word. Hatem.

  ‘Have you checked out where these coordinates are for?’ he asked.

  ‘I have, Mr Hunter. The Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple.’

  ‘And the word, Hatem?’

  ‘You’re the cipher breaker, Mr Hunter. I’m sure it must be significant, but I’ve no idea who or what Hatem is.’

  ‘I used to play a little chess at school, but I’ve always been a bit rubbish at puzzles – especially cryptic ones,’ Ross replied. ‘Though I know someone who might be able to help.’

  Robert Anholt-Sperry gave him the beatific smile of a true believer. Of someone utterly convinced that, no matter their earthly foibles, their seat at Heaven’s top table was reserved. ‘Clearly you have been sent to save us, Mr Hunter. What you have revealed to me on your phone is the first sign. Just believe in yourself, because surely our Lord believes in you, that’s why He has chosen you.’

  Ross was startled by the man’s sudden clear and unexpected show of devoutness. He found himself envying him his conviction. How simple it would be to embrace God, he thought. To hand over absolute responsibility for all your actions to some higher power. I’m so sorry I shouted at my neighbour’s cat, but he did keep shitting in my garden. I apologize for calling that man in the station ticket office a total moron. In future, I will spread your message of love.

  ‘I’m honestly not sure I’m your man,’ he replied. ‘I was pretty much of a non-believer for a long time.’

  ‘Until your brother, Ricky, spoke to you.’

  ‘Is that what Harry Cook told you?’

  ‘It’s not important who told me. What matters, Mr Hunter, is that you know. Don’t you? In your heart, deep down. You have the choice. You can walk out of here and get on the train and go home and forget this mad old man and his ramblings, just like you were on the verge of dismissing Harry’s ramblings, too. But you aren’t going to, are you? One way or another, as a journalist you have a story. At worst you could cobble together something that will give you a page, maybe a two-page spread in one of the tabloid rags. At best?’ He let the words hang in the air before continuing. ‘Think about that. Are you going to be able to live with the knowledge that you once walked away from the chance of bringing mankind back from the brink?’

  Ross shrugged.

  The solicitor opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a fat envelope and handed it to Ross. ‘Harry instructed me to give you this if anything happened to him before he could give it to you himself.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Expenses. Ten thousand pounds in cash.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take it with you. If you decide not to proceed, then return it to me.’

  ‘I can’t take this.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Anholt-Sperry said, assuredly. ‘If you decide to walk away, just return it to me, but I don’t think you will walk away. Come back to me once you have found what awaits you at the second set of coordinates. Then you will know for sure. Once you have proved yourself – and proved to yourself – I am authorized by Harry Cook to give you the third set of coordinates. With the third, you will find the location for the Second Coming of Christ Himself. You can either believe me or just walk out of here. The choice, Mr Hunter, is yours.’

  42

  Thursday, 2 March

  The mock-Tudor semi-detached house at the end of a close in Walthamstow, East London, looked unloved. Thick blackout curtains for privacy had been drawn shut across all of its windows, both upstairs and downstairs, for as long as many of the neighbours could remember. The brown pebble-dash rendering was missing chunks in several places, and the window frames, badly in need of putty and a coat of paint, were rotting. The front garden was a riot of weeds.

  The only clues that the house was occupied were occasional deliveries from Ocado, the online grocery service, a weekly delivery of Arabic newspapers by a local newsagent and the occasional visitors, most of them in the traditional robes of Muslim clerics. None of the neighbours could remember the last time they had seen its male occupant emerge.

  In the gloom of the upstairs back room sat a blind man of fifty-six, with a shaven head and a long, greying beard. His name was Hussam Udin. Fifteen years ago, wrongly identified, convicted and imprisoned for being the leader of an al-Qaeda cell, he had been blinded and badly disfigured in an attack in HMP Belmarsh, first having had battery acid squirted in his face, followed by a poultice of scalding wet sugar.

  His ‘crime’ for which he had been punished by Muslim inmates was that, although born a Muslim, he had declared himself to be concerned about Islam, both because of the violence of some of its factions and because few imams within the faith were prepared to stand up, publicly, against the violence.

  His name meant, literally, ‘Sword of Faith’. Notwithstanding that, and despite his tribulations, Udin believed in tolerance, and in the years since his release he had followed a spiritual path, using all the strength and wisdom he had been given to spread messages of peace.

  Seven years ago, after being freed from prison on the basis of wrongful conviction, through the dogged work of an Amnesty International lawyer, he had retreated to his home, which he and his wife had turned into a fortress, and where he remained in constant fear for his life. He spent his days drilling through the braille texts of the Qur’an, trying, through a series of papers he published, to demonstrate that, unlike the claims of groups such as ISIS, and their interpretations of the Holy book, Islam was a deeply misunderstood religion that in truth promoted peace and tolerance. The tolerance, when necessary, to accept non-believers.

  The Sunday Times had sent Ross Hunter to interview Hussam Udin shortly after his release, and Ross had really liked the wise and witty man. He admired him for the fact that he held no grudge against his assailants and for his determination to spend however much time it took – the rest of his life if necessary – to correct the Western myths about the religion he had turned his back on, but still respected.

  ‘You have to understand, Mr Hunter,’ Udin had said at that first meeting, ‘that in Christianity, and Judaism, if you have doubts you are free to choose that path. That it might take a lot for a nonbeliever to become a believer. In my religion it is different, there is a different question you have to ask, because from the time we are born, belief is instilled in us. The question you need to ask a Muslim is not what it would take for him – or her – to believe in God. Rather you should ask, what would it take for a Muslim to not believe in God?’

  On his way back down from his meeting with the strange, but sincere, Birmingham solicitor, Ross decided to call in on this man. Greeted like an old friend, he now sat with Hussam Udin in his office, surrounded by piles of audio tapes, cassettes and memory sticks
, sipping the strong, sweet coffee and gratefully eating the biscuits that Udin’s wife, Amira, had brought him.

  Udin, dressed in a brown robe and wearing dark glasses, smoked a cigarette. There was an old Cinzano ashtray on the coffee table in front of them, and he seemed to know its approximate position. After every few drags he leaned forward and flicked the filter tip. Sometimes the ash landed in the right place, other times it sprinkled on the table. A dozen butts lay stubbed out in the ashtray. They chatted for a while, catching up, before coming to the point.

  ‘You were very generous to me, in your piece in the newspaper, Mr Hunter. I have always felt I owed you something for the way you portrayed me.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, thank you.’

  ‘So to what do I owe the pleasure of such a distinguished journalist giving up his valuable time to visit me?’

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Oh? What help do you seek?’

  ‘You told me when we last met that you were born and raised in Egypt. In Cairo?’

  ‘Indeed I was.’

  ‘Are you still in contact with people there – friends or family?’

  ‘With some – not just in Cairo, but in other places of my birth country, too.’

  ‘That’s what I was hoping.’

  ‘I’m sensing you need something? Urgently and importantly?’

  ‘Do you have any contacts in Luxor?’

  ‘Luxor?’

  ‘Yes. I need someone in Luxor with a car, whom I can trust.’

  Udin raised his head, holding like a dart his third cigarette since Ross had arrived, and drew on it again. Ash tumbled down his front. Oblivious to it, Udin said, ‘I have a cousin there who could help you. Would you like me to speak with him and vouch for you, my friend?’