Absolute Proof

by Peter James

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘Come and see what came in while I was at work today.’

  He knelt for a moment, hugging and stroking the dog, as she secured the new safety chain, then followed her into the kitchen. Her laptop was open on the table. She tapped the keyboard and he saw the message on the screen.

  THIS IS YOUR SECOND WARNING.

  YOU DON’T GET A THIRD.

  Turning to him, she demanded, ‘Can you explain that?’

  He studied the address of the sender. It was the same Hotmail address as the previous untraceable one – he recognized it from the ‘666’ among the numbers.

  ‘I think we should speak to the police,’ he said.

  ‘And tell them what? That you think you might have pissed Satan off?’

  He smiled grimly, thinking hard. ‘I tell you what, I’ll call Jason Tingley.’

  Tingley had been a young DC whom Ross and Imogen had first met during their days on the Argus and who was now a superintendent.

  ‘I’m scared, Ross.’

  ‘I’ll call him now.’

  He looked through his contacts until he found the name, Jason Tingley, and dialled the Detective Superintendent. It rang and after some moments he got Tingley’s voicemail and left a message.

  ‘Hi, Jason, it’s Ross Hunter, could you give me a call, I need some help.’ He left his number and ended the call.

  ‘So, tell me about your trip. How did it go. What did you find?’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it. I need a drink and I need to get something to eat.’

  ‘I took a moussaka out of the freezer for you and there’s some salad in the fridge.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He went over to the cabinet, removed a bottle of his favourite whisky, poured a large measure into a glass, added some ice from the fridge, splashed in a drop of water and sat at the table. Just as he did so, looking again at the email, his phone rang. It was Jason.

  Putting the phone on speaker, for Imogen’s benefit, they caught up briefly and he congratulated the detective on his recent promotion. Then he gave him a summary of what had transpired since his original call from Harry F. Cook, but omitting – for Imogen’s benefit – the attempt on his life in Egypt. Tingley told him he would put out an alert to the Brighton Neighbourhood Policing and Response teams and a request for vigilance on his home. He asked him for the registration numbers of his and Imogen’s cars. Then added he would ask someone from the Digital Forensics team to contact him, and take a look at the messages Imogen had been sent. He asked Ross to update him on any developments. Ross thanked him and they made vague arrangements to meet for a coffee soon.

  As he ended the call, Imogen said, ‘Is this how we have to live our lives from now on? Prisoners in our own home? In constant fear? Dependent on police protection?’

  He stared back at her, and sipped some whisky. ‘It’s what I do, Imo. I’ve always taken risks with stories I’ve written, exposing injustice.’

  ‘It’s different. I’m now getting really scared for your safety – our safety. I think you’re out of your depth. It’s not just about you, think about our child – he’ll need a father. You have a bigger priority than your next story now.’

  ‘Imo, I want our son to be proud of me. When he grows up I want him to be someone who stands up for what he believes in.’

  ‘You know what I want?’ she retorted. ‘Or rather what I don’t want? I don’t want our son to be an orphan.’

  58

  Thursday, 9 March

  In the glare of floodlights from the belly of the helicopter, Ainsley Bloor could see the blades of grass, around the landing circle, bending in the downdraught from the rotor blades. Moments later the machine touched down and settled.

  Thanking his personal pilot and wishing him a good night, he unbuckled his safety harness, removed his headphones and hooked them up behind him, then pushed his door open and clambered out. He kept his head ducked low until he was well clear of the still-rotating blades, although he could have stood safely at his full six-foot height.

  The shadow of his mansion, with several lights blazing in windows, lay a couple of hundred yards in front of him. But he turned away from it, shouldered the strap of the bag containing his laptop and paperwork he needed to go over before tomorrow, and hurried across the lawn towards the orangery and the six cages containing his monkeys, eager to see if any progress had been made.

  He switched on the lights and entered, wrinkling his nose at the sour stench, and inspected each of the cages, looking for pages of printout, which would have meant the monkeys had been tapping the keys. There was no printout in any of the first five. Just monkey shit and peanut shells on every keyboard and printer, and puddles of piss on the floor.

  Then he peered through the bars of the sixth, Boris’s. And saw, excitedly, that there were several pages of printout.

  Murmuring platitudes to the monkey, he let himself into the cage and rushed excitedly across to the printer, tore the pages free and looked at them. Boris watched him from a perch, rubbing his chin like an ancient sage.

  Bloor scanned through six pages of a meaningless jumble of letters of the alphabet, symbols and numbers. Then as he reached the seventh page, he froze.

  And stared.

  At the three letters staring out at him, like a gleaming nugget of gold in a sack of coal.

  He wanted to high five the monkey.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, you good boy, you! Boris! Yes, yes!!!!’

  And all the nightmare of the past few days was forgotten at this moment.

  ‘Wow! You good boy, you! Wow!’

  Shelling a peanut, the capuchin monkey gave him a bemused stare.

  ‘You’ve done it! You’ve bloody done it!’

  He took the printout and hurried towards the house, calling out to his wife before he’d even reached the door. ‘Cilla! Cilla!’

  She was in the drawing room, watching an orchestra on television.

  ‘Look!’ he shouted. ‘Look what I have!’

  ‘How about, Hello, darling, how are you, how was your day?’ she replied, sharply.

  ‘Look at this!’ He grabbed the remote and froze the screen. Then he held the sheet of printout in front of her face. ‘Look! Look!’

  ‘At what, exactly?’

  ‘The start of the proof! The absolute proof that there is no Creator. That the world came into existence through random chance. This is monumental! Remember tonight! It will go down in history.’

  ‘The night a monkey typed the word “the”?’

  ‘You just don’t understand the significance, do you?’

  ‘Actually, no. And there’s something else I don’t understand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re an atheist. A hard-core atheist. You’re conducting this barmy experiment because you have this weird notion that through these monkeys you can conclusively prove that God does not exist, right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘In that case, why are you so keen to get hold of Christ’s DNA? Or am I missing something?’

  ‘No, you’re not missing anything. That’s called business, darling.’

  ‘I have a different word for it. Hypocrasy.’

  59

  Thursday, 9 March

  At a few minutes past 11 p.m., Ross was sitting alone in his den, his emotions in turmoil. Suddenly he saw headlights moving very slowly along the street and stopping outside his house. For a moment he stiffened, then relaxed when he saw it was a marked police patrol car. Detective Superintendent Tingley had been true to his word.

  The car moved on.

  As it did so, his phone rang, the display showing the number was withheld.

  After a brief hesitation, he hit the green button. ‘Ross Hunter,’ he answered.

  The male voice at the other end was so quiet he had to strain to hear it.

  ‘Ross? It’s Hussam Udin.’

  ‘Hussam!’ he said to the blind cleric. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Are you able
to speak?’

  ‘Yes, yes, sure.’

  ‘Ross, I just heard from my cousin, Medhat El-Hadidy.’

  ‘Thank goodness he’s alive. I’m sorry, Hussam. I’m just so sorry to get your cousin involved in this, I really hope he’s OK. I don’t know what was going on or who was behind it. Did he say how he is?’

  ‘He’s OK but his car isn’t. Ross, this is what I need to say to you – I do know what is going on. I must meet you very urgently. You are in much greater danger than you can possibly know.’

  ‘What kind of danger, Hussam?’

  ‘This is not a telephone conversation. When could we meet?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning?’

  ‘I think that would be wise.’

  ‘I could be with you about eleven o’clock – would that work?’

  ‘I am always here.’

  ‘I’ll see you then.’

  The moment he ended the call, he sensed someone behind him and spun round.

  It was Imogen.

  ‘Who was that, Ross? Do you want to tell me? What danger are you in that I don’t know about already?’

  He took a deep breath and showed her the photographs he had taken in Egypt. Then he told her. Everything. Starting from the beginning.

  When he had finished she asked, ‘So what happens now, Ross?’

  ‘I wait for the DNA results.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘They’re probably zilch. Nothing. End of.’

  ‘But what if there’s a match, between the tooth and the contents of the chalice? What then?’

  ‘We’ll have to see.’

  ‘People tried to stop you in Egypt. People are threatening us here. What if it’s all real? What if there is a match? What then, Ross? All those who claim to possess relics like the Turin Shroud, the Holy Tunic of Christ, the Spear of Destiny. I’ve been looking them up on the internet.’ She tapped her iPhone and looked at her list. ‘The Crown of Thorns, the Iron Crown of Lombardy, the Veil of Veronica, the Mandylion, and all the rest. There are huge commercial interests involved, Ross. Their owners aren’t going to want the DNA you have to disprove them. You’re a newspaper journalist punching way above your weight here. I don’t think you realize quite how deep in you are, nor what kind of a hornets’ nest you’re opening. Is any story worth our lives? And why is it YOU who’s been chosen?’

  She looked at the window and the darkness of the night beyond as if noticing for the first time, got up, walked over and pulled the blinds shut. ‘Have you thought about that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Imogen. Maybe because whoever did choose me figured I had a chance of getting the story taken seriously. But you have to understand, nothing matters more to me than our baby. OK?’

  ‘So, nothing matters more to you than our baby?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You’re a given!’

  ‘Then prove it to me.’

  ‘How can I do that?’

  ‘Go tell the world you’re forgetting about it. Post it on Twitter and Facebook. Announce you’re no longer pursuing the story. Post all the sodding coordinates. Give them to the world.’

  ‘I can’t do that – not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’ Imogen demanded.

  ‘Because I don’t have the final one – the most important one of all – yet.’

  ‘Then get it and post it, as quickly as you can.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can do that.’

  She shook her head. ‘Same old, same old. You come first, our son doesn’t matter, I don’t matter.’

  ‘No, Imo, I don’t come first. Mankind comes first.’

  ‘And if you believe that, you’re a bigger egotist and an even bigger fantasist than I ever realized.’

  She walked out of the room.

  60

  Friday, 10 March

  At 11.30 a.m. the next morning, Ross sat in the curtained privacy of Hussam Udin’s office, gratefully sipping the strong, sweet coffee, his head pounding a little from too much whisky, which he had sat drinking into the small hours of last night. He was drinking too much, he knew, way more than normal, but nothing was normal any more.

  The cleric sat regally, dressed as ever in a brown robe, dark glasses covering his blind eyes. A lit cigarette in his hand hovered over the Cinzano ashtray filled with stubbed-out butts. ‘You’ve been through an ordeal, Ross, but you escaped.’

  ‘Somehow. Not entirely thanks to your cousin.’ He was beginning to see more as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness.

  ‘Perhaps it was through the will of Allah?’

  Ross smiled. And realized it had been several days since he had last smiled. ‘You could say that.’

  He could see the man was not smiling but looking worried.

  ‘You were followed here today, Ross.’

  ‘No,’ he replied emphatically. ‘I kept a careful watch.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Ross, you were followed.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You sound tired, your judgement is impaired today, perhaps. You are dealing with very clever people. They will be following you everywhere and you will never see them. They will have bugged your phones, also.’

  ‘I checked under my car this morning for any tracking devices, and there was nothing.’

  ‘I’m telling you, you will see nothing.’ Udin’s glasses fixed on him with uncanny precision, as they so often did. ‘Ross, when you came to see me, you said that you needed a man in Luxor with a car, who could keep you safe. Now it is all very different. My cousin has a wrecked car that his insurance may not cover, but he failed to protect you, so I am not happy with him. More importantly, you are in trouble, am I correct?’

  ‘It’s not that simple. If I can, I will try to reimburse Hadidy. But listen, I thought, as an investigative journalist, I had a story to write based on the ramblings of an elderly, deluded widower who believed he had proof of God. But now it seems a whole lot bigger and more real than I could ever have imagined.’

  ‘And more dangerous?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It involves conclusive proof of God’s existence, if I am correct?’

  ‘You are.’

  Udin placed his hand on his chest. ‘Sometimes, in my heart, I feel envy for those who have unquestioning faith. For them, provided they have lived their lives according to Allah’s will, death holds no fears. It’s the same for all other faiths. Everyone on earth who believes in one God. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs. They all just interpret him differently. Perhaps the Sikhs most of all. Their aim is to see the divine order that God has given to everything, and through it to understand the nature of God. Perhaps they are closest in their beliefs to my own – that of Intelligent Design. But no matter. What concerns me at this moment is that a friend of mine is in grave danger. That friend is you, Ross. This is what I hear.’

  ‘What do you know, Udin?’

  ‘I have many friends in my home country, Egypt. I am told by them that what you have brought back to England is an item of the greatest significance. For that reason, it puts you in very great danger.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I am told that you have brought back with you something that belongs to another religion altogether – one that is a sometime enemy of Islam and of other faiths. If this object is real – is what you believe it might be – it is a dangerous thing for you to possess. Many people will be after it. One group have already very nearly killed you for it. They are not going to stop until they have it, and their resources are infinite.’

  ‘You know who they are?’

  Udin put a fresh cigarette in his mouth and attempted to light it from the burning stub of the previous one. Ross watched him as the two ends kept missing each other, wondering if he should intervene. Then they connected. Drawing the smoke in deeply, Udin ignored the question. ‘You brought home with you a tooth. It may or may not be one from your prophet, Jesus Christ. DNA testing may perhaps enlighten
you.’

  Ross, staring into the glasses, nodded, wondering. How did he know this?

  ‘Imagine, my friend, you obtain DNA from this tooth, which turns out to have true provenance. And then with carbon dating you establish this did indeed come from two thousand years ago. You have another object, possibly the cup that Jesus Christ drank from at the Last Supper, and in which, when He was on the cross, some of His blood was captured. Imagine the DNA from this is a match to the tooth?’

  ‘How do you know all this, Hussam?’

  ‘I told you, my friend, Ross. I may be entombed in this house, and almost certainly will die here, but I have people out in the world who tell me things. They listen, they are connected, they know. What you have in your possession may turn out to be nothing at all or may be real. If these are real, there will be many people who will want them and are prepared to take them, and you will be the discarded pawn.’

  ‘You say you know who tried to hijack me, Hussam. Who are they? I have to know. Tell me.’

  ‘You do know who they are. You may not be aware, but for sure you know who they are. All of us do. We swallow their vitamins and pills; we might brush our teeth with their brand of toothpaste; take their cough medicine; swallow their laxatives when we are constipated; use their nasal sprays when we are congested with colds; some of us will use their stop-smoking aids. This company kills millions of people every year in Africa and other poor countries by selling them untested or out-of-date drugs, or powdered milk that does not contain the mothers’ vital antibodies the babies need. Do you think they’ll care about one English newspaper reporter’s life?’

  Ross stared at him. ‘This sounds like any big pharma. Which one, Udin?’

  ‘Kerr Kluge.’

  ‘Kerr Kluge?’ Ross echoed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re making these people sound like the Antichrist.’

  ‘They only have one religion, Ross, and that is money. The bottom line, at all cost.’

  ‘Are they worried about Jesus returning? That he might put them out of business because he can heal the sick without pharmaceuticals?’