by Peter James
MOTHER MURDERED BABY
His phone rang. The display showed a number he didn’t recognize.
‘Ross Hunter,’ he answered, guardedly.
‘Mr Hunter, my name is Quentin Grieg, and I do apologize for the intrusion of this phone call. I’m calling on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Word has reached our team of a story you are working on.’ The man sounded immensely courteous and friendly.
‘Can you give me a number and I’ll call you straight back?’
After a moment’s hesitation, Grieg gave it to him and Ross wrote it down. He called him straight back on his burner phone. ‘What story is that?’ Ross asked. ‘I’m actually working on a number of stories at the moment.’
‘This one is of a religious nature, if we are correct?’
‘Yes,’ Ross replied. ‘Correct.’
‘The Archbishop is intrigued. We only have very scant information at this stage, but he wonders if you would be prepared to spare some of your precious time to discuss it with him?’
Ross, astonished to get this call, thought quickly. This was a golden opportunity. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Head of the Anglican Church in the UK, wanted to meet him. Whichever way this story ended up, to be able to put in one or two quotes from the Archbishop would give it enormous credibility.
‘Yes, I’d be very happy to meet him.’
‘I have a couple of dates when he will be at Lambeth Palace in London, with some availability in his diary. But I’m instructed to tell you that if these are not convenient for you, the Archbishop is prepared to cancel appointments in order to meet.’
Ross felt a strange tingling inside him. The Archbishop of Canterbury was prepared to cancel appointments to meet him? He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Could it be a hoax of some kind? Or was there some agenda going on? Had Benedict Carmichael alerted the Archbishop?
‘He could see you at 3.30 p.m. this afternoon or at 11 a.m. tomorrow.’
‘I could make this afternoon,’ Ross said.
Grieg gave him directions and told him a car-parking space would be reserved for him, if he required one.
Ending the call, he heard the microwave ping.
He went inside and removed the bowl of porridge. He carried his breakfast back out, sat down, and began flipping through the pages of the Argus.
And stopped, drawn out of curiosity to one headline a few pages in.
DIVORCED BECAUSE HE PRESSED
TOO HARD
He read the story. It was an accountant who had been married for twenty years, until his wife had suspicions he was being unfaithful. For some while she had been unable to get any concrete evidence. Then she had seen indentations on a notepad, from which the previous page had been removed.
Unable to decipher them, she remembered a programme she had seen on television about a facility at a forensics laboratory the police used, where there was a piece of kit, called ESDA, that could recover handwriting from even the faintest of impressions left on a pad.
The firm was ATGC Forensics.
Suddenly, he had a light-bulb moment. Thinking back to when Dr Cook had visited him.
Thinking about the manuscript that he had left with him.
I have of course inked those compass coordinates out, Mr Hunter, in case this fell into the wrong hands.
He grabbed his phone.
Monty trotted up to him with his lead in his mouth.
Ross put down the phone and patted him. ‘I’m sorry, fellow, no big walk yesterday and none so far this morning. I’ll make it up to you later when I’m back, I promise. We’ll go for a long walk this evening, OK?’
The dog gave him a look that said it wasn’t really OK at all.
Then the doorbell rang. He hurried in, cautiously peered through the spyhole and saw a young man holding a bag. It was a Crime Scene Investigator, who introduced himself as Alex Call.
For the next hour, Call dusted for prints around the house. Ross left him to it. When he had finished, the CSI told him that so far there had been no matches to anyone they had on record.
As soon as Call left, Ross grabbed his car keys, went outside, opened the garage door and drove his Audi in, then climbed out and pulled the garage door shut behind him. There was something he wanted to load into the boot of the car that he did not want to risk anyone seeing who might be watching out in the street.
82
Wednesday, 15 March
Julius Helmsley limped into his CEO’s office at a couple of minutes to 10 a.m., holding a bag of croissants in one hand and a stiff brown envelope in the other. ‘Good radio interview, Ainsley. Very good,’ the Chief Operating Officer said.
‘Huh.’
Before sitting down at the meeting table by the window, Helmsley said, ‘You’re not recording this?’
‘I’m not mad, Julius. No. Coffee?’
Helmsley nodded and Bloor poured. ‘What have you done to your face?’
Helmsley, embarrassed, touched the sticking plaster across his left cheek. ‘I tripped.’
‘Tripped? Tripped up? Hurt your leg, cut your face? Good party, was it?’
‘Very amusing.’
A launch, with a blue and yellow Battenberg-painted superstructure and the word POLICE stencilled on its hull, cruised along the Thames beneath them.
Bloor slid the cup, followed by a jug of milk, towards Helmsley. ‘So, what happened?’
‘We’ve made a mistake, we hired a wild animal who is now holding us over a barrel.’
‘Not we, Julius. You. This man in Monaco?’
He nodded.
‘The one who doubled his price on us when you went to see him?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s the man you recommended.’
‘He was recommended to us. Blue-chip credentials. Pretty impressive track record.’
‘Yep, well I’m very impressed. So far he’s taken us for eight million and now he’s going to hold us to ransom.’
‘I’ll fly to Monaco and sort it with him.’
‘Monaco doesn’t have an airport,’ Bloor said, testily.
‘I’ll fly to Nice and take the helicopter.’
‘No, you won’t take the helicopter and you won’t fly in luxury. This is your screw-up. You can fly easyJet and take a sodding bus.’
Helmsley grinned, then saw Bloor wasn’t joking.
‘Do we even know he’s actually got it?’
‘He’s got it, I’m sure of that. The third set of compass coordinates. The ones the Birmingham solicitor, Robert Anholt-Sperry, was due to hand to Ross Hunter yesterday afternoon,’ Helmsley said. ‘Or rather I should say, the late solicitor.’
‘Ross Hunter,’ Bloor said the name acidly. ‘I’m minded of the words of Henry the Second – “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”’
‘I believe he actually said meddlesome,’ Helmsley said. ‘Turbulent is a misquote.’
Bloor gave him a querulous stare. ‘I don’t think this is the moment for semantics.’
‘Sorry, boss.’ He poured some milk into his coffee. ‘But killing Hunter at this stage wouldn’t be smart. I’m pretty certain he holds the key.’
‘Do you think he’d do business with us?’
‘Hunter?’
‘He’s struggling financially and has been for a couple of years. Journalism is paying less and less. We know he’s got a big mortgage; credit cards close to the limit and a child on the way.’
Helmsley gave him a strange look. ‘While we’re on quotations, “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.” Hunter is wily and dangerous – we’ve already seen that. He has powerful press connections and all our research on him shows he’s not a man motivated by money. Several people and organizations who’ve tried to buy him off in the past have ended up with egg on their faces. One thing we are certain of is that he has, concealed somewhere, part or all of what we believe is Jesus Christ’s DNA, and we need that.’
‘What about this manuscript he’s rumoured to
have in his possession – that Cook gave him and we couldn’t find in Cook’s house?’ Bloor reached over and grabbed a croissant from the bag. ‘These always remind me of crabs,’ he said, tearing off one end and holding it up. ‘Like a pincer, don’t you think?’
‘That’s never occurred to me.’
‘Do you find a lot of things don’t occur to you, Julius?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Sometimes I feel you treat everything as a game. We’re not playing a game here. If we get what we’re after, you realize what it can do for our company, don’t you? Jesus Christ’s DNA informing our products? You have a handsome shareholding. It’s already made you a wealthy man, on paper. But this could take us to a whole new level – it could make you a billionaire, right? So, get real.’
‘How are the monkeys?’ Helmsley answered, like a petulant child. And then, for a moment, thought his CEO was about to have a heart attack.
Bloor rose from his chair and thumped both fists on the table. ‘What have my bloody monkeys got to do with anything?’
Helmsley raised his hands in the air, in a pacifying gesture. ‘Just trying to figure out how you square them with this.’
‘Square them with what?’
Peering at him through his red-rimmed spectacles, Julius Helmsley said, ‘The experiment you’re conducting with the monkeys is designed to prove – or at least suggest – how the world might have originated by pure chance rather than by intelligent design. And yet you believe the future growth of our company could be linked to the DNA of the Son of God. A slight contradiction, isn’t it?’
‘I call it business, Julius. There are 2.2 billion Christians in the world. If you were a Christian—’
‘I am,’ Helmsley interrupted.
‘Good. Then maybe you’d like to tell me something. Imagine you are afflicted with an incurable disease. Are you going to go for gene therapy treatment from the company that possesses Jesus’s DNA or from another that doesn’t?’
‘There’s no contest, Ainsley.’
‘My point exactly. So, let’s get real. This third set of coordinates must be in that damned manuscript of Dr Cook’s as well as on that memory stick.’
‘And do we think this journalist has a copy of the compass coordinates? In the manuscript?’
‘I don’t think he can have, Julius. That’s what he went to Birmingham for, yesterday. If he had the coordinates in the manuscript, he wouldn’t have needed to go there.’
‘OK, so he doesn’t have them. Let’s assume they’re in the pannier of a motorcycle somewhere between here and Monaco – in the hands of a crook of a hitman who doesn’t actually realize what he has got. Ross Hunter has been to ATGC Forensics – whatever they’ve given him, they must have records on file.’
‘Could we try hacking or breaking in to them, Julius?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve looked into it. They’re a fortress. One of the main DNA resources for many of the UK’s police forces. There’s plenty of villains who would dearly love to penetrate them – and it’s never happened. We’ve tested them, and their security is strong – everything is coded and not even their lab staff know the identity of their clients beyond a coded number.’
‘There must be someone working there who has access to Hunter’s files whom we could bribe – or kidnap?’ Bloor said.
‘I don’t think that’s a runner. We’re better off to stay cool, get whatever our friend in Monaco has off him, watch Hunter round the clock and see where he leads us. I have that sorted.’
‘And just where do you think he is going to lead us?’
Julius Helmsley smiled. ‘To the promised land.’
83
Wednesday, 15 March
Shortly after 10 a.m., Ross sat in a small, first-floor meeting room, in his solicitor’s modern offices. He was staring out of the window at Brighton’s Jubilee Library across the road, a building he was very fond of, sipping a cup of tea the receptionist had brought him and waiting for his document to be brought in, when his phone pinged.
It was a text from Imogen.
Need to pick up some stuff from the house on my way back from the office. What time u there? Don’t want to go alone. X
He replied.
Dunno – have meeting in London this afternoon. Probably around 6.30 pm. Can call you when I’m on my way, if you like? X
The door opened and his lawyer’s legal assistant came in carrying a large box file, which she showed to Ross. ‘I think this is the one you mean?’
It was labelled ROSS HUNTER – PRIVATE.
He opened the lid and peered inside. Then he turned to her. ‘Yes, this is it, thank you.’
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Pointing at the phone on the end of the table, she said, ‘Just dial 21 when you’re ready to go – or if you need anything– and I’ll answer.’
‘I might want to get something photocopied.’
‘No problem at all, just shout.’
As she closed the door he lifted the manuscript out of the box file and placed it on the shiny tabletop. Then as he removed the first of the two elastic bands, it snapped, the rubber perished. He removed the second carefully, then set about the arduous task of going through it, one page at a time, thinking about Cook’s words.
I have of course inked those compass coordinates out, Mr Hunter, in case this fell into the wrong hands.
It took him just under an hour to find them, on page 565. He missed them the first time through because the inked sections were so small.
On one line, the name Chalice Well was followed by an inch and a half of something inked out with a felt-tip pen. Two lines down, Egypt, Valley of the Kings, was followed by a similar deletion. And a further two lines down he saw words that he was looking for.
Second Coming.
Followed by an inch and a half of something again inked out.
Gingerly putting this sheet of paper to one side, he picked up the one directly below, page 566, and raised it to the overhead light. It was faint, but there was very definitely something there, visible across the ink scrawl. The imprint of the writing on the previous page.
The coordinates?
84
Wednesday, 15 March
Julius Helmsley, still smarting from his CEO’s anger, and uncomfortably aware of how he had screwed up big-time, sat in his office, staring at the computer screen. On it was a road map, showing a section of the M25 London orbital road. A small red dot was moving steadily along in the light late-morning traffic. He watched it turning off onto the M3, heading north towards London.
Ross Hunter’s Audi.
The journalist who figured he was so smart would not find the tracking device even if he took the car apart. It was concealed inside a brake-light bulb in one of the rear lamp clusters.
Thirty miles away, in his first-floor office in the west wing of Gethsemane Park, Lancelot Pope sipped his herbal tea. He watched the dot moving north along the M3 on his iPhone, from the data fed back to him by the eight-car surveillance crew currently on shift.
He was still furious at the idiots who had failed to box Hunter in on the motorway as he was returning from ATGC with the redhot goods in his car. But it taught Pope, if he didn’t have it already, respect for Ross Hunter’s cunning. Like the bloody fox that had managed to break into his fenced-off garden at his weekend cottage in Dorset and kill all the Pochard and Whistler ducks on his pond.
He continued to watch the dot as it travelled towards Kingston.
Heading back to ATGC Forensics, straight from his lawyers in Brighton?
What was going on?
Yesterday Ross Hunter had been to a law firm in Birmingham for the second time. Then in the local news, only as a minor item, had been the sudden, unexplained death of the managing partner, Robert Anholt-Sperry. A suspected heart attack or stroke.
Dr Harry Cook’s solicitor.
Thirty minutes later, Pope’s assumption proved right. Ross Hunter pulled up in the car park of ATGC Forensics. As he
did so, Pope’s phone rang.
‘Yes?’
‘Just to let you know, boss, that the subject has pulled into the car park of ATGC Forensics.’
‘I can see that. What’s he doing there?’
‘He’s out of his car. Walking in with an envelope under his arm.’
‘Follow him! Find out what the hell is in it.’
85
Wednesday, 15 March
Ross returned to his car after his brief meeting with Jolene Thomas, by the reception desk of ATGC Forensics. She was going to take the page he had removed from Cook’s manuscript, page 566, to the ESDA team. Even just holding it up to the overhead lights in the reception area she could see there were clear indentations from the handwriting on the sheet above. From what limited amount she knew about the ESDA abilities, she was confident of a positive result.
He switched on the engine, then programmed the satnav for the route from where he was, in Kingston, to Lambeth Palace, tapping the postcode in carefully. SE1 7JU.
The journey time read forty-seven minutes.
It was now 1.15 p.m. and his appointment was not until 3.30 p.m. That gave him ample time to grab a bite of lunch en route and to still carry out his plan.
The traffic was much heavier now he was on the outskirts of London. With the satnav giving him an arrival time of 2.21 p.m., he headed west, crossed the winding Thames for the first time, close to Twickenham, again at Richmond and then again at Kew. The phone now gave his arrival time as 2.48. Then switched to 2.37.
Thirty minutes later, heading along Chelsea Embankment, the device told him to turn right onto Vauxhall Bridge.
As he crossed the winding Thames once more, he pulled over. Then he entered a search on the satnav for car parks. There was one directly ahead as he reached the busy Elephant and Castle gyratory. He missed it the first time round, got himself into the correct lane and managed a neat exit into the multistorey on his second circuit, driving up to the fourth floor before the sign showed there were available spaces.
