The Doomsday Prophecy

by Scott Mariani

  He turned and strode back to the cobbled side-street where he’d watched Lucy walk away from him. It was poorly lit and narrow, and the high buildings either side threw long black shadows across the cobbles. Little more than a long alleyway. There was nobody around.

  Just Lucy and the three guys.

  They were thirty yards away. They had her pressed up against the wall. One in front with his hand on her throat. One each side, blocking her escape. She was struggling and kicking. One of them had her bag, and she was holding onto the strap, trying to snatch it back away from him. Then she let go, and Ben heard a laugh over her faint cries.

  He moved stealthily against the dark shadows. They were too preoccupied with Lucy to notice his approach, but not even a professional soldier would have heard him. Two of them were white, and the third one who’d ripped her bag out of her hands was Asian. The one holding her throat looked the most useful. Shaved head, nose ring, confident attitude. Definitely the leader. The other white one was short, chunky, mostly fat. They were little more than kids, aged probably between seventeen and twenty, all in the same kind of designer sports gear.

  Just kids, but dangerous kids. Something glinted in the dull amber light. The leader had reached inside his jacket and drawn out a blade. A kitchen knife, black plastic handle, maybe eight inches of serrated steel. He waved it in Lucy’s face. She let out a stifled scream and he growled at her to stay still and shut the fuck up.

  Ben’s fists tightened at the sight of the knife. He moved closer, completely quiet. They still hadn’t seen him.

  The Asian kid was rifling through her bag, looking for her purse whilst his fat friend grabbed her arm, trying to pull off her watch. Her eyes were locked open in terror.

  Ben stepped out of the shadows. They froze. Stared at him. Lucy gasped his name.

  His mind was full of the ways he could take them out. Three seconds, and they could all be down and broken on the ground. As for the knife, it was big and scary to the average victim, but the leader kid had no idea how to use it. Not against someone trained to take it off him and drive it into his brain pan before he could even draw a breath.

  They were dangerous kids. But still kids.

  ‘Open the purse,’ he said to the Asian one. The kid glanced down at it, then back at Ben. He blinked.

  ‘Go on, open it,’ Ben said, keeping his eyes on the leader. His voice was steady and soft.

  The knife kid was frowning and Ben could see the confusion in his face. He knew what he was thinking. Three against one, but something was horribly wrong with the balance of power. His confidence was ebbing away fast, and the defiance in his eyes was fading into fear as he fought for words. The knife was wavering a little in his fist. He slackened his hold on Lucy, and she wriggled away from him.

  The Asian kid did what he was told. The purse was tan leather, well worn. He unsnapped the catch and opened it.

  ‘How much cash is in there?’ Ben asked.

  The kid dipped his fingers inside the purse and came out with a twenty.

  ‘Not much of a haul, boys,’ Ben said. ‘Less than seven pounds each. Then you’d find that the debit card’s no good because the account is already in the red. And the credit card is maxed out. Let’s face it, she doesn’t have the money. So you go home with seven pounds. Real hard guys. A great night’s work, something you can go and boast about to your friends.’

  The kid with the knife finally found his voice again. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. But he couldn’t hide the quaver in his throat.

  Ben ignored him. ‘OK, let’s make a deal here.’ He reached into the back pocket of his jeans. Took out his wallet and flipped it open. Inside it was a sheaf of fifties, crisp from the cash machine. He counted through them slowly, taking his time, feeling their eyes on him. He picked out six notes and tucked the wallet back in his jeans. ‘Three hundred. A hundred each. Better than seven. And much more than you’re worth.’ He held it out to them. ‘It’s yours.’

  The knife guy stepped forward to take it.

  Ben pulled the money back. ‘This is a trade. That means I want something from you in return. Four things. One, let her go free. Two, give her back her bag. Three, put the knife on the ground. Then I’ll give you the money. Nice and easy. Four, then you leave, and I don’t ever want to see you again.’

  They hesitated.

  ‘If you don’t want to trade, that’s OK too,’ Ben said. ‘The only thing is, you’ll all be dead within the next half-minute because I can’t think of any other options. It’s up to you.’

  The Asian kid was beginning to tremble violently. The knife kid’s eyes were bulging wide. Nervous glances passed between them all.

  ‘I’m offering you a way out here,’ Ben said. ‘I’m buying your lives back from you, so that I don’t have to kill you.’

  The leader stooped and laid down the knife. The blade clinked against the cobbles. The Asian kid handed the bag back to Lucy, and then they all moved quickly away from her. She was shaking, pale. She scurried over to Ben’s side, and he laid a hand on her shoulder.

  He kicked the knife away across the alley. ‘Good choice. A defining moment. You’ve no idea how lucky you were tonight.’ He held the money out. The leader kid’s fingers were trembling as he went to take it. Then all three of them turned tail and ran like hell.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ben asked Lucy.

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet in the darkness. ‘I can’t believe what you just did. How did you do that?’

  ‘Let me walk you home,’ he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  The seventh day

  The Bradburys lived in a large Victorian semi-detached house on the edge of the leafy suburb of Summertown. Ben arrived at twelve thirty with a bottle of wine and some flowers for Jane Bradbury. He hadn’t seen her in a very long time. Physically, she’d changed little, other than some grey streaks in her dark hair – and he thought he could see a certain fragility in her thin frame that hadn’t been there before. He remembered her as a quiet woman, slightly in the shadow of her ebullient husband. But today she was even quieter than he recalled.

  Lunch was served on the patio at the rear of the house. The garden hadn’t changed much in almost two decades. Tom Bradbury’s rose bushes were even bigger and more colourful than Ben remembered, and the high stone walls around the edge of the garden were now covered in ivy.

  After lunch they sat and sipped wine and made small talk for a while while the Bradburys’ Westie, a sturdy little white terrier, all muscle and hair, ran to and fro across the lawn, sniffing through the grass on the trail of something. ‘That dog looks exactly like the one you had last time I was here,’ Ben said. ‘Surely it can’t be the same one?’

  ‘That was Sherry you remember,’ Jane Bradbury said. ‘This is Whisky. Sherry’s son.’

  Hearing his name mentioned, the dog stopped what he was doing and came running. He trotted up to Ben, sat back on his haunches and offered his paw.

  ‘Our daughter Zoë taught him that,’ Bradbury said. ‘He’s really more her dog. But we look after him most of the time, since she’s not here very often.’

  ‘How is Zoë?’ Ben asked.

  It was just a casual question, but it seemed to have a strange effect. Bradbury shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked down at his hands. His wife paled noticeably. Her face tightened and her movements stiffened. She caught her husband’s eye, her look full of meaning, as if she was urging him to say something.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ Ben asked.

  Bradbury patted his wife’s hand. She sat back in her chair. The professor turned to Ben. He seemed about to speak, then instead reached across the table for the bottle and topped up all three glasses. He set the bottle down, picked up his glass and gulped half of it back.

  ‘I’m getting the impression this isn’t just a social occasion,’ Ben said. ‘You want to talk to me about something.’

  Bradbury dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin. His wife stood up nervously
. ‘I’ll fetch more wine.’

  Bradbury reached into the hip pocket of his tweed jacket, brought out the old briar pipe and started packing the bowl with tobacco from a plastic pouch.

  Ben waited patiently for him to speak.

  Bradbury was frowning as he lit the pipe. ‘We’re happy to see you again,’ he said through a cloud of aromatic smoke. ‘Jane and I would have invited you here to have lunch with us, even in normal circumstances.’

  ‘So you’ve asked me here for a particular reason,’ Ben said. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  Jane Bradbury came back out of the house carrying another wine bottle, which she placed on the table. It looked from their faces as though they had a lot to tell Ben, and it was going to be a long afternoon.

  The professor and his wife exchanged glances. ‘I know it’s been a long time since we were in touch,’ Bradbury said. ‘But your father and I were good friends. Close friends. And we think of you as a friend too.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Ben said.

  ‘So we feel we can trust you,’ Bradbury went on. ‘And confide in you.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ben leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘We need your help.’ Bradbury hesitated, then continued. ‘It’s like this. When you left Oxford, all those years ago, we heard rumours. That you had drifted for a while, and then joined the army. Apparently done very well there. Just rumours, nothing specific. Then, six weeks ago, when we interviewed you as a returning mature student, you told me and my colleagues a little about the career you had pursued in the meantime. I know you didn’t want to go into too much detail. But you said enough to give me a clear impression. I understand you’re a man with a very specific set of skills and a great deal of experience. You look for lost people.’

  ‘I was a crisis response consultant,’ Ben said. ‘I worked freelance to help locate kidnap victims. Especially children. But not any more. As I told you at interview, I’m retired.’

  ‘Especially children,’ Bradbury echoed sadly.

  ‘This has something to do with Zoë,’ Ben said.

  Jane Bradbury got back up from her seat. She walked through the french windows into the house and came back a few moments later holding a framed photo. She set the silver frame down on the table and nudged it towards Ben. ‘Do you remember her? She was just a child, the last time we saw you.’

  Ben cast his mind back to those days. It all seemed so distant. So much had happened since. He remembered a sparkling little thing running across the lawn with the dog trotting happily after her, sunlight in her hair and a world of joy in her gap-toothed little smile.

  ‘She was about five, six years old then?’

  ‘Almost seven,’ Bradbury said.

  ‘So she’s twenty-five, twenty-six now.’ Ben reached out for the photo. The silver frame was cool to the touch. He turned it towards him. The young woman in the picture was strikingly pretty, long blond hair and a full smile. It was an honest, happy picture of her hugging her little dog.

  Bradbury nodded. ‘She turned twenty-six in March.’

  Ben put the picture down. ‘What’s wrong? Zoë’s in some kind of trouble? Where is she?’

  ‘That’s the problem. She was supposed to be here. And she’s not.’

  ‘I’ve had too much wine already,’ Jane Bradbury said suddenly. ‘I’ll go and make us some coffee.’

  Ben watched her go. There was a lot of stiffness in her movements, like someone under enormous pressure. He frowned. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Bradbury toyed uncomfortably with his pipe. He glanced over his shoulder. Whatever he was about to say, he obviously preferred to say it without his wife there. ‘We’ve always loved her deeply, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ Ben said, not sure where this was going.

  ‘This is a little hard for me to talk about. Personal things.’

  ‘We’re friends,’ Ben said, meeting his eyes.

  Bradbury smiled weakly. ‘When Jane and I got married, it took us a long time before we could have a child. It was nobody’s fault.’ He made a face. ‘It was my fault. Embarrassing. The details are –’

  ‘Never mind the details. Go on.’

  ‘After five years of trying, Jane became pregnant. It was a boy.’

  Ben frowned. The Bradburys had no son.

  ‘You can guess what happened,’ Bradbury continued. ‘His name was Tristan. He didn’t see his first birthday. Cot death. One of those things, we were told. It was devastating.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said, and meant it. ‘That must have been tough.’

  ‘A long time ago now,’ Bradbury said. ‘But it’s still very raw. So we tried to have another, but again it was hard for us. We were on the point of giving up, and talking about adoption, when Jane conceived. It seemed like a miracle to us. Nine months later we had the perfect little girl.’

  ‘I remember her well,’ Ben said. ‘She was lovely. And bright.’

  ‘She still is,’ Bradbury replied. ‘But for so many years we were terrified of losing her. Irrational, of course. Her health’s always been excellent. But these things leave a mark on you. I admit we spoiled her. And I’m afraid we perhaps didn’t bring her up quite the way we should have.’

  ‘What is she doing now?’

  ‘She went on to become a brilliant academic. She’s never really had to try. She sailed through her studies. Archaeology. First class from Magdalen. She was all set for a glittering career. Biblical archaeology is a major field of study. It’s a relatively new science, and Zoë has been one of its pioneers. She was part of the team that found those ostraka in Tunisia last year.’

  Ben nodded. Ostrakon, from the Greek, meaning shell. In its plural form, it was the name archaeologists gave to fragments of earthenware that once served as cheap writing materials. Ostraka had been widely used in ancient times for recording contracts, accounts, sales registers, as well as manuscripts and religious scripture.

  ‘I read about that find,’ he said. ‘I had no idea I knew the person responsible for it.’

  ‘That was such a wonderful moment for her,’ Bradbury replied. ‘In fact, what her team discovered was the biggest haul of intact ostraka found since the 1910 excavation in Israel. They were buried deep under the ruins of an ancient temple. An amazing find.’

  ‘She’s clever,’ Ben said.

  ‘She’s exceptional. But that’s not all she’s done. She’s written papers and co-authored a book on the life of the Greek sage Papias. She’s even been on television a few times, interviewed on an archaeology channel.’

  ‘You sound very proud of her.’

  The professor smiled. Then the shadow fell back over his face. His chin sank down to his chest. He fingered the pipe. It had gone out. ‘Professionally, academically, she’s wonderful. But her private life, and our personal relationship with her, is a disaster.’ Bradbury raised his hands and let them flop down on his thighs. A gesture of helplessness. ‘What can I say? She’s wild. Has been since the age of fifteen. We just couldn’t control her. She was in trouble with the law a few times for petty crimes. Shoplifting, picking pockets. We used to find stolen items in her room. It was all a joke to her. We hoped she would grow out of her wildness in time, but she didn’t. Drinking. Parties. All kinds of reckless behaviour. It’s been fighting and difficulty all the way. She’s argumentative, aggressive, terribly headstrong, always has to have it her way. It takes very little to provoke her into a quarrel.’ He looked up at Ben with red-rimmed eyes. ‘And I know it’s our fault. We spoiled her completely, because we felt so lucky to have been given a second chance at having a child.’

  Ben had been sipping his wine steadily as Bradbury talked. He filled his glass again. ‘Let’s talk straight, Tom. You told me you were concerned that she wasn’t here. Has she gone missing?’

  Bradbury nodded. ‘Nearly a week now.’

  ‘And you think she’s in some kind of trouble?’

  ‘We don’t know what to think.’

  ‘A week
isn’t a long time, under the circumstances. You said yourself, she’s wild. She’ll turn up.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that.’

  ‘You’re telling me all this because of what I used to do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’ll listen to my professional opinion.’

  Bradbury shrugged. ‘Yes.’

  ‘People do go AWOL from time to time,’ Ben said. ‘Now, if someone does go missing and there’s clear evidence that something has happened to them, there are things we can do to get them back. But you need to distinguish between a legitimate missing persons case and someone who’s just a little wayward, argues with her parents, likes to have fun and has gone off the radar for a short while.’

  ‘She’s done it before – gone off the radar as you say,’ Bradbury said. ‘We’re realistic. We can accept a lot of things. We accept that she’s free and likes to enjoy herself. Sexually, I mean.’ He flushed with embarrassment. ‘But this time it’s different. This time it’s really strange, and we have the most terrible feeling about it.’

  ‘So what makes this time different?’

  ‘The money. I mean, where did all that money come from?’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Let me backtrack. Zoë was working on an excavation project in Turkey. It was meant to last until the end of August. But then the next thing we knew, she left it early and was on Corfu. We have some friends there. She was staying with them for a while.’ Bradbury paused. ‘Then, suddenly, she seemed to have all this money. She’s a doctoral student. She doesn’t have money, at least no more than she needs. According to our friends she was suddenly loaded with it. Thousands. And the way she was spending it, it was as though it would never run out. Started partying all the time, coming home drunk with a different man every night.’