by Peter James
So how did it go at the lab?
He replied:
Interesting! Tell you all later.
Then he replied to his editor:
Maybe Thursday week – if I’m still alive.
The reply came back seconds later.
I trust you are joking.
He typed back:
I wish I was.
Opening his address book, he looked up the number of the Birmingham solicitor, and dialled it, recognizing the voice of the battle-axe who answered. He gave his name and asked if he could speak to Robert Anholt-Sperry.
‘I’m afraid he’s in conference with a client – may I ask him to call you back? Will he know what it is about?’
‘Yes,’ Ross said. ‘He will.’
Next, he made a call to attempt to contact a man he had not spoken to since around the time of his return from Afghanistan. He didn’t even know for sure he was still alive. He googled the website of the place where his uncle Angus resided, and found a phone number. He dialled it.
‘Is it possible to speak to the Prior?’ he asked the calm, surprisingly jovial-sounding man who answered.
‘You’re speaking to him.’
Ross explained who he was and what he wanted.
‘Mr Hunter, you realize that our brothers here are hermits residing under a collective roof? They have chosen the silent life of prayer and contemplation secure from the distractions – and intrusions – of the world. All I can do is to ask Brother Angus – I will do it via a note with his evening meal. But I cannot promise you a response.’
As Ross ended the call he had a thought, and entered into Google the words ‘laboratory test tubes’.
After a few minutes searching through three sites, he found exactly what he wanted.
66
Monday, 13 March
It wasn’t until he got two hundred pages into the Pratchett novel that Ron Spokes began to figure out he had read it before. Stuff like that was happening all the time at the moment. And his stomach was going thermo-nuclear, fizzing and gurgling. There had been something in that curried sub that had tasted strange, he should have spat it out. Was he now going down with food poisoning, on top of everything else?
The only good news was it was 5.55 p.m. Just five minutes to go. Then he could head home, via the kebab house – or maybe not, the way his stomach was feeling. But perhaps more food was what it needed. He could give it a try – and spend the evening as he had planned, bingeing on skewered lamb and honey-and-pecan ice cream, watching the old movie The Matrix, which his mate Mick, at the darts club, had been raving about.
6 p.m.
We’re done!
He levered himself off the stool, his knees complaining at standing up after sitting down too long, and waddled over to activate the night-time alarm system. As he left the front entrance and walked into the damp, misty darkness of the car park he had an attack of stomach cramps. He could feel the build-up of wind inside him as the cramps tightened for a moment, and he doubled up, with tears of pain in his eyes, until the cramps finally relaxed their grip.
He walked on towards his shit-box, rust-bucket of a car. The twenty-year-old Honda Accord that hadn’t been serviced in over a year. The MOT deadline was in four days and there was no way it was going to pass. Three bald tyres and a knackered exhaust system. Without the car, he didn’t know how he was going to get to work. And there was a new lady he had started seeing, Madeleine. Was he going to have to take her out on a date by bus – how impressed would she be?
He put his key in the lock, not that there was much point in securing the vehicle – it would take an even sadder loser than himself to steal it, he thought. He eased himself into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut and fumbled in the darkness to get the key into the ignition. Then he let out a massive fart.
‘Charming,’ said a male voice behind him.
As he jumped in shock, Spokes felt something hard and cold press into the back of his neck.
‘This is what you think it is,’ the voice said. Then an instant later, ‘Jeez, what have you eaten?’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m here to give you a choice. I can either be your executioner or your fairy godmother.’
‘Very funny.’
‘I’m not joking.’
The cold barrel of the gun pressed harder into the security guard’s neck.
‘I know how much debt you are in, and I have with me enough cash to clear all your credit cards – ten thousand pounds in folding – so we could do business if you like?’
‘What business?’
‘I just need you to let me in, deactivate the CCTV and take me to the locker of one of your customers, Mr Ross Hunter.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Oh yes you can, I promise you, you can, and you are going to, aren’t you?’
‘You know the trouble I’ll get into?’
‘Not as much trouble as being dead.’
67
Monday, 13 March
‘Ross, what on earth are you doing?’ Imogen asked, climbing out of her car.
He stood at the top of the ladder, which was leaning precariously against the front wall of the house, struggling to fix the CCTV camera to the wall just beneath the eaves.
‘Nearly done!’
‘Nearly done what? Killing yourself?’
The screwdriver, along with the two rawlplugs he had been holding in his mouth, fell to the ground. They were rapidly joined by the electric drill, which fell off the top rung. ‘Shit, shit, bugger!’
‘Get down!’ she said, sounding furious and gripping the ladder.
Sheepishly, he clambered back onto the ground, holding the camera in his left hand. ‘I bought these this afternoon – I thought it would make us feel safer.’
‘Coming home and finding you at the top of a ladder is going to make me feel safer? I don’t think so. You and DIY do not go together. You have a great talent for writing – you’re not a bloody electrician.’
‘It’s not difficult to put these up.’
‘So I can see.’
He shrugged. ‘Yep, well maybe they are a bit harder than I thought.’
‘Why don’t we phone the electrician and ask him to deal with it tomorrow, if he can?’
‘Maybe that’s a good plan.’ He smiled. ‘How was your day?’
‘It was fine until around midday when I got a craving for salt and vinegar crisps.’ She gave him a guilty look. ‘I’ve eaten three packs of them. Like, large packs. Now I’m parched.’
They went inside. Ross closed the front door and slid home the safety chain.
As she knelt and stroked Monty, Imogen asked, ‘So, the lab, what happened?’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘The DNA is a match. It’s crazy, can you believe it?’
‘Between the tooth and the cup?’
‘Yes.’
She blanched. ‘Saliva on the cup?’
‘No – from what they identified, it’s quite degraded blood.’
She stared at him in silence. ‘I need a drink,’ she said. ‘A small glass of white wine – that would be OK, wouldn’t it?’
‘On the evening you discover your husband is possibly in possession of Jesus Christ’s DNA, I think a small glass of wine is permissible.’
‘Don’t be frivolous.’
He went to the fridge, in silence, took out a bottle of Albarino and began to open it. ‘I’m not being frivolous.’
‘I don’t like it. I said it before, you are punching way above your weight here, Ross.’
He brought her glass over, handed it to her and sat back down.
‘Dr Cook was killed over this,’ she said. ‘You were nearly killed in Egypt. I’ve had threats. Is any bloody story worth risking our lives for? You’re into crackpot territory here. Religious fanaticism.’
‘Come on!’
‘No, Ross, you come on. Get real.’
‘Is there anything more real than a DNA match between a tooth in the back
of a cave in Egypt and a cup I found sealed in an ancient container in Chalice Well? Just supposing it’s true, that Cook really did get a message from God. And I was the person chosen to tell the world – and I walked away from it. I don’t think I could live with that.’
‘You’ll be a fat lot of use to the world dead,’ she said.
‘I’ve got to see this through. I have to, OK?’
‘Why? Because you owe it to Dr Cook? You said yourself he was a nutter.’
He sipped his wine. ‘He’s not seeming such a nutter any more.’
‘No?’
Ross went up to his den and returned with the printouts that Jolene Thomas had given him. He laid them out on the table and talked Imogen through them.
‘So what am I supposed to say?’ she said, when he had finished. ‘That I’m impressed?’
‘Tell me what I’m getting wrong here, Imo. This is dynamite. It’s possibly the biggest story ever. Can you imagine the headlines?’
‘Yes, and that’s what scares me. You told me what your bishop friend told you. All the religious factions out there – and the nonreligious ones.’
‘Potentially delivering to the world proof of God? Could we really ignore that?’
‘I could,’ she said. ‘I’m sure if God cares that much about saving the world he could find someone else.’
‘You have faith, Imogen. Far more than I do. You go to church regularly.’
‘I do. But I don’t have faith in this madness you’ve got yourself into.’
He stared at her and could see the fear in her face. He was fully aware of the danger they were in. He was still shaken by what had happened on the motorway earlier. And yet. It was bigger than just a newspaper story, way bigger. There was just one key piece to the whole thing he had yet to obtain – and with luck he would get that tomorrow.
‘I’m going to Birmingham tomorrow, to see Cook’s solicitor again. Come with me, see for yourself.’
‘I can’t, Ross, you know that, I have to be in the office.’
‘OK. He has the final piece to this puzzle that he’s going to give me. That will show, for sure, whether there is any real substance to this story or if it’s just a crazy old man’s delusion. I’ll make the decision after that.’
‘And if there is substance, what then, Ross?’
He stared down at the table for some moments before looking her in the eye again. He had no answer.
68
Tuesday, 14 March
Lancelot Pope had no answer either. It was 10 a.m. He sat dumbfounded opposite Wesley Wenceslas, in the white-carpeted boardroom at Gethsemane Park, with the view through the grand, first-floor windows across terraces of perfect green lawn leading down to the lake. There was a man-made island, in the shape of a cross, in the centre of which stood a twenty-foot-tall white marble statue of the pastor, with his arms open, expansively, as if gesturing to the heavens.
Around the walls hung the Wenceslas collection of icons, acquired during the past decade from auction sales all over the world. A small tooth and a wooden cup sat on the twenty-seater table. The silence was broken momentarily by the buzz of Pope’s mobile phone vibrating. He muted it, and gave Wenceslas an update from the surveillance team of the previous day, including how their rivals had nearly run Hunter off the road.
‘Well?’ said Wenceslas, furious. ‘I don’t see my Smilealot smiling a lot. Do you?’
Pope stared again, dumbly, at the two objects.
‘I’m waiting for your explanation, Lancelot. Meantime my personal cup of bounteous patience is running dry.’
Pope picked up the wooden cup and turned it round in his hands for the third time. He had a sheepish expression. ‘This is what – what was in – in Ross Hunter’s storage locker at the depot.’
‘And you paid ten thousand pounds for it.’
‘You did authorize it, boss.’
‘I authorized you spending ten thousand pounds to secure the Holy Grail and the tooth belonging to Jesus Christ, so we could protect and guard them in the name of our Lord.’ He reached across the table and snatched the cup out of his MD’s hand. He turned it upside down and held the base up close to Pope’s face. ‘I do not think that the authentic chalice of our Lord, the Holy Grail, would have a “Made in China” sticker on the bottom. Do you? Is it really likely China was exporting wooden cups to the Holy Land two thousand years ago?’
Pope hesitated. ‘Probably not.’
‘Probably fucking not, no!’ Wenceslas exploded, banging the cup down hard on the table.
‘We’re dealing with someone very smart here, boss. It could be that Hunter took this label off something else and stuck it on the chalice to try to fool everyone.’
‘Is that what you really think?’ He picked up the tooth. ‘And you think that Jesus Christ our Lord was a vampire, do you?’
‘A vampire?’
‘I don’t know what dentists were like back in the days of our Lord, but I’m doubting they carved teeth into fangs. Or am I missing something here?’
Pope stifled a nervous grin. ‘No, you’re not, you could be right, boss.’
‘This is not a human tooth, this belongs to an animal, a wild animal. I don’t know anything about teeth, but I know one that isn’t human when I see it. We’ve just paid ten thousand pounds, that could have gone to help the poor, on a crap wooden souvenir and the tooth of a dead dog. We’ve been had.’
‘Maybe Hunter has been had,’ Pope replied lamely. ‘This is what was in his locker.’
‘Then the Holy Grail and the real tooth of our Lord Jesus Christ are somewhere else. Not in Mr Hunter’s locker. Find them, and find them fast.’
‘Leave it with me, boss.’
Wenceslas stared at him. ‘We do not have long. Word will be getting out about what this man, Hunter, has. He is still being followed and observed?’
‘Twenty-four-seven.’
‘So where is he right at this minute?’
Pope consulted an app on his phone. After a few moments he gave Wenceslas a wary look. ‘He left Brighton twenty minutes ago and drove through the village of Henfield, approximately ten miles north of there. The team have momentarily lost visual on him.’
Wenceslas banged both fists on the table, repeatedly. ‘What? What? What?’
‘It’s OK, they’re not far behind, they’ll find him again.’
‘Sure they will. Just like you found the Holy Grail. I’ll tell you where they should start looking – how about a souvenir stall in a Shanghai street market?’
69
Tuesday, 14 March
Ross had driven past the sign countless times, as had hundreds of thousands of others, barely noticing it. And he almost missed it now.
ST HUGH’S CHARTERHOUSE
A small white board on the grass verge, in front of an unruly hedge, discreetly marking the entrance to the monastery.
He braked hard, putting out his hand to stop his clinking bag tumbling off the passenger seat into the footwell, and turned sharp left onto a paved driveway. He drove past a small cottage, with no sign of life. The driveway curved before straightening out and passing under the archway of a gatehouse. Straight ahead was an imposing-looking edifice that reminded him of one of the grand Cambridge University buildings. The tallest part, topped with three spires, was flanked on both sides by glassed-in, cloistered wings, and had a grand oak door.
He pulled up, climbed out and lugged the clinking carrier bag from the passenger seat, collecting his rucksack from the boot.
The door opened and a chubby man in his sixties with white robes, a white skullcap and wearing Birkenstocks appeared. He strode across with a friendly smile, exuding more the air of a bon viveur than an ascetic monk.
‘Mr Hunter?’
‘Yes.’
He held out his hand. ‘I am Father Raphael, the Prior – we spoke yesterday. Welcome to our humble abode.’
Ross responded smiling, ‘It doesn’t look that humble!’
‘Well, actually, we are
rather blessed. Among other things we have the longest cloisters of any monastery in the United Kingdom.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Indeed. As the actor Michael Caine might say, “Not a lot of people know that!”’
Ross grinned, surprised to find the Prior so worldly.
‘But I don’t think you have come, Mr Hunter, to hear about the length of our cloisters. Let me take you to your uncle Angus. He was very pleased to have word from you – much to my surprise – but that’s good. I believe contact with the outside world is not always a bad thing. Even for those leading the cloistered life. He is not enjoying the best of health, so I hope your visit will cheer him up.’
Ross followed him along a paved, high-ceilinged corridor with stark, bare stone walls and frequent columns. They passed a wooden noticeboard with a list of names. He only had time to absorb a few of them: Bro William; Dom Pachomius; Bro Alban; Dom Ignatius; Dom Henry; Dom Stephen Mary. Then a small, cream sign: HAIRCUT 9.30–10.
They turned a corner and entered a long, narrow, cloistered walkway. It had a grey flagstone floor and white walls criss-crossed with cream vaulted arches which stretched away, seemingly, to the distant horizon. Every twenty yards or so was a closed, ornate wooden door, with a Latin inscription above.
A short distance along, the Prior stopped outside one of these doors. Ross looked at the Latin, but had no idea what it meant.
Mihi enim vivere CHRISTUS est, et mori lucrum.
The Prior rapped on the door.
Ross tried to remember the last conversation he had had with his uncle. Angus had long been referred to by his parents as the black sheep of the family. In photographs Angus had shoulder-length hair, tinted round spectacles, and was dressed in a black T-shirt, skinny jeans and Cuban-heeled boots. Ross used to think it was cool to have an uncle who was a rocker.
Now he had no idea what to expect, but even so, as the door opened very slowly, as if by an elderly woman afraid of an intruder, he was shocked by the gaunt figure that appeared. With his sallow skin and shaven head, wearing a robe with a pointed hood, his uncle looked like a ghost.
