THE HISTORY OF THINGS TO COME: A Supernatural Thriller (The Dark Horizon Trilogy Book 1)

by Duncan Simpson

  ‘How you doin’, Frida?’ Blake didn’t wait for a reply before continuing. ‘A pint of the usual, when you have a moment.’

  ‘Vincent, it’s good to see you. You’ve been a stranger. I thought you’d disappeared.’

  The landlady of the Jerusalem Tavern was a chirpy forty-four-year-old woman with a deep tan that contrasted with the pallid skin of most of her customers. She had a wide face with high cheekbones, and along the top of her left eyebrow was the faint trace of a scar. Instead of violating the symmetry of her face, the blemish seemed somehow to enhance her appearance.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been away,’ said Blake.

  The landlady began to pull a pint of brown frothy ale from the hand pump.

  ‘I’m meeting a lady here, but I’m a bit late. Have you seen anyone?’

  Frida’s eyebrows raised inquisitively.

  ‘No, it’s not like that,’ said Blake.

  ‘I see,’ replied Frida playfully. She delivered Blake’s pint to the bar. ‘There’s a woman in the snug sitting by herself. She’s been there for half an hour or so.’ The landlady nodded to the open doorway at the other end of the bar.

  Sabatini sat alone behind one of the three wooden tables that occupied the small side room of the Jerusalem Tavern. Clasped in her hand was a simple silver crucifix. Brother Nathan had given it to her at the airport as a thank-you gift for organising the trip to Cambridge. She was squeezing it tightly when Blake walked into the room.

  ‘Dr Blake, thank goodness you’re here,’ said Sabatini.

  ‘Please, call me Vincent.’

  Sabatini forced a smile. ‘Okay, then please call me Carla.’

  She looked exhausted and, by the redness around her eyes, Blake guessed she had been crying.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late. Can I get you a drink?’ said Blake.

  The small remnants of ice floating in the glass of water in front of her confirmed that Sabatini had been there for quite some time.

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ said Sabatini.

  Blake sat down opposite Sabatini and took a small sip of his drink.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ asked Blake.

  ‘Vincent, before I start, you need to understand the implications of what I am about to show you.’

  Blake was disorientated by the intensity of her expression.

  ‘I understand you were brought up in the Faith.’

  Sabatini was now staring directly into Blake’s eyes.

  ‘Please forgive me, Carla, but that was then. Things have changed. I think we’ve talked about this before.’

  ‘You mean because of your wife and daughter?’ said Sabatini.

  The corners of Blake’s mouth dropped like a guillotine.

  ‘I don’t want to be rude, Carla, but that’s a private matter.’ Blake felt slightly embarrassed by the directness of her question and the terseness of his response.

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ she said. ‘What I mean is that you understand the work of the Church and what it means to millions of people.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Blake.

  ‘What I’m about to show you must remain completely confidential. You must understand that Brother Nathan was a good man. He was a second father to me.’

  Sabatini opened up the leather handbag resting on her lap and took out a red book. She handed it to him.

  ‘Brother Nathan dropped this in my car on our journey up to Cambridge.’

  Blake gave the volume a cursory external examination. ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘It’s the reason why Nathan was murdered and the reason for the robbery.’ She had Blake’s attention.

  ‘I had my suspicions that things hadn’t been quite right with Nathan for the past few weeks. He’d been acting rather strangely in the run-up to his visit to Cambridge. When I heard from a mutual friend at the library that he had started to miss morning mass, I wondered if his angina had been troubling him again.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Blake.

  ‘Then he started ringing me, time and time again, about the arrangements for our trip. I remember he sounded very preoccupied, almost nervous. He desperately wanted to examine the Newton exhibits with his own hands. I knew that his old colleagues at the library were arranging a dinner for him for his seventieth birthday, so I originally scheduled the trip for early in the New Year, but he was insistent. He wanted to come to Cambridge at the earliest opportunity. Now I understand the reason for his urgency.’ Fighting back the tears, Sabatini motioned for Blake to start reading.

  Blake rested the spine of the vivid red book in the palm of his hand. It was no bigger than a small paperback, with a cover of crimson velvet. Unusually, for a book of such obvious antiquity, the velvet cover was in excellent condition, as was the elaborate golden border that ran around its perimeter. However, what caught Blake’s attention, more than its physical condition, was the strange hexagram design on its cover; the same design had been cut into Brother Nathan’s chest at the mortuary. He opened the book and with a gentle puff of breath carefully separated the delicate leaves. Quietly he made a cursory examination of its contents.

  It appeared that each facing page was written in elaborate gold lettering, the language an almost impenetrable mix of medieval French and Hebrew. Periodically, the writing was interspersed with a series of strange symbols, probably alchemical in design. On the opposite pages was a narration written in neat copperplate lettering. Though very small in dimension, each word could be easily made out. Blake recognised Newton’s handwriting immediately. Without asking Sabatini for confirmation, he started reading.

  Thirty minutes later, Sabatini felt ready to explode with anticipation. Since reading the crimson notebook, she had been consumed by the revelation contained within its pages and had longed to share its existence and burden with another person. She hovered at Blake’s side, waiting for his eyes to reach the bottom of each delicate page before turning to the next, longing him to reach the end of the dense copperplate narrative. Blake read on in complete silence. Finally, he reached the last page, Newton’s handwritten commentary eventually taking the form of a perfect equilateral triangle.

  In the narrow compass of this writing, I have set down the history of my actions. I have concealed Gérard de Ridefort’s map showing the location of the holy rod in the hope that a righteous man will use it well. Only God can search hearts of men and discover the truth, and to Him it must be left. I pray to God, that He gives you the grace to make the right use of it. It is a treasure greater than all the conquests of Alexander and the Caesars; for these are mere trifles compared to the power of the rod.

  I have taken from this book the map revealing the rod’s location in the great Cathedral of St Paul’s and hidden it until the chosen time. For the parts of Prophecy are like the separated parts of a watch. They appear confused and must be compared and put together before they can be useful. Descend the eighty-eight steps and unlock the stone door, as all will be revealed in a time, times and half a time.

  Jeova Sanctus Unus

  Sabatini looked down at her hand. As she unclenched her fist, her face grimaced from the pain now throbbing in her palm. She had been grasping Brother Nathan’s silver cross so tightly that it had punctured her skin. As she slowly opened her hand, she saw that a small pool of blood had collected in the well of her palm.

  Chapter 47

  Blake’s landlord tensed his body in a supreme effort to free his arms and legs from their restraints, but he quickly realised that his struggle was hopeless. At first, he questioned whether he was actually dreaming, but the pain blazing across his jaw and the overpowering metallic taste of blood on his tongue gave him no doubt. Though his eyes were now fully open, he could see nothing except for the smallest shaft of light coming up from an area around his neck. All of a sudden he felt as if he were suffocating, and panic took hold of his body. He started to s
hake violently, his wrists and ankles straining against an unyielding force. He tried to scream out, but the pain in his jaw exploded with an excruciating intensity. In all but near darkness, tears and sweat began to stream down his face.

  Hearing a sound to his left, the landlord froze. His senses strained to lock onto the noise that appeared to be moving slowly towards him. Then the backs of his hands felt a rush of wind before a massive crash detonated close by. The shock of the sound sent the captive into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing, his brain unable to cope with the sudden jolts of sensory input. Another sound, this time moving behind him, shook him back to his senses. He tried to slow his breathing and avoid visualizing what was happening around him. For a second, all was perfectly still and then his eyes were filled with a brilliant white light. Blinded, he tried to raise his hands, but no matter how hard he struggled to get them free, they remained pinned to the armrest of the chair.

  Slowly unscrewing his eyes, the landlord became aware of his surroundings. His vision quickly resolved the diffuse shape in front of him into the outline of a large man. For the first time he could see the nature of his restraints. His wrists and ankles had been bound to the chair with electrical insulation tape. Again, he jerked his body in an attempt to set himself free, but this only had the effect of tightening the tape even further.

  ‘There’s no point in struggling,’ said the figure.

  Squinting, the prisoner looked up at the man towering above him. The man was swinging a thick white and red canvas sack, about the size of a cushion, close to his face. ‘Any more and I’ll tape your mouth up and put this back on your head.’

  Struggling to focus on the object in front of him, he slowly followed the movement of the sack like a patient following a hypnotist’s watch. It took him a short while to register that the crimson colour that permeated the sack fibres was still damp, its surface giving off a dark glossy sheen. The moment he realised that the pigment was in fact his own blood, sheer terror took hold of his body. His chair began to shake.

  Why? Why is this happening? His mind raced, trying to find a connection that would provide an answer to this unfolding nightmare. He had taken the law into his own hands a few times, but business was business. The landlord tried to avert his gaze from the face of the man now standing just a metre from his sweat-drenched body.

  ‘Look at me. Look at me!’ shouted the man, his voice full of menace. The landlord complied with the instruction as best as he could, but as he slowly raised his head to meet the eyeline of his persecutor, the vision in his right eye started to blur. ‘You have something I want and I can assure you, I will get it. Do you understand?’

  A glimmer of recognition quickly solidified in the landlord’s mind. The Albanians! The previous month, the landlord had to evict an Albanian family from one of the flats upstairs. They hadn’t been able to keep up with their rent payments and had been causing trouble. Waiting until the family of four had left the flat, he and a hired hand from the betting shop had set about changing the locks and clearing the premises of their possessions, but not before helping themselves to anything of value. He might have used a little too much force, but they owed him and he wasn’t going to stand around while they took the piss. They’ve set the Albanian mafia on me … all for a crappy camera and a handful of old jewellery.

  Grabbing a handful of the target’s hair, Crossland yanked his head back, causing an agonising scream to echo around the walls of the bedsit. The cause of the pain was obvious. The handle of Crossland’s pistol had done a lot more than incapacitate his target; it had shattered the right side of his jaw, leaving it hanging limply as if he had just suffered a stroke. A long pendulum of dark red slaver swung from the end of his chin. Crossland moved closer, his lips now almost touching the target’s ear.

  ‘Listen to me very carefully. I know who you are and that you are working for the police. I know what you have in your possession. We can do this quickly or slowly, and rest assured, I can cause you an unimaginable amount of pain.’ Crossland tilted his head slightly and gently blew on the side of the landlord’s cheek. Pain ricocheted through his eye socket.

  Crossland’s demeanour turned even more threatening.

  ‘Where is the watch?’ he said. ‘Have you given it back to the police?’

  The landlord tried to answer, but his shattered jaw mutated his words into a series of incomprehensible grunts. Crossland shouted the question again, his mouth now inches away from his hostage’s face. Again his prisoner tried to answer, but now he was fighting desperately for breath. With every shallow intake of air he could feel a pressure, like a band of steel, tighten around his chest and move down his left arm. A series of violent tremors convulsed through his body like powerful waves smashing onto a beach. With each intense shock, his hands writhed against their restraints, the tape cutting deep into his wrists. The pain in his chest was unbearable. He tried to scream, but he didn’t have enough breath in his lungs. The landlord could feel a pressure building in his head, as if his brain were expanding against the rigid walls of his skull. He started to see shooting lines of colours. There was a feeling of momentary release and then a burning sensation between his eyes, as if a trail of gunpowder had been lit deep within his brain and was now burning a channel of white-hot phosphorus through his head, consuming everything in its path. The landlord’s last conscious thought was a memory of his mother cutting his father’s hair, before everything turned a terrifying black.

  Crossland knew exactly what had just occurred. He had seen it happen enough times during periods of interrogation at the internment facilities in Baghdad. Heart attacks were an unfortunate risk of enhanced interrogation techniques, but the timing of this one couldn’t have been worse. Although he had spent the last couple of hours turning the flat upside down, the pocket watch wasn’t in his possession.

  In sheer frustration, Crossland launched the heel of his biker boot onto the side of the chair, sending it and the landlord’s body crashing to the floor. There was now only one thing to do. Walking over the scattered contents of several upturned packing cases, Crossland headed towards the kitchen area. From the sink he retrieved a blue petrol canister. As he hauled it against himself, the weight of the canister shifted from side to side like a boat listing in a heavy sea.

  Even before he had unscrewed the black plastic cap from its nozzle, the sickly sweet smell of petrol swirled around his head. He stood over the corpse. It stared back up at him, its face frozen with terror. Crossland stepped forward and raised his right foot just a few inches above the dead man’s face. Then with a twisting motion of his boot heel, he prised open the lips to form a gaping yawn. Slowly he tilted the fuel can and watched a stream of petrol flow into the landlord’s open mouth, as though he were a parched man drinking under a waterfall. Almost immediately the mouth was full and petrol spilled out from its sides, soaking the carpet underneath. Heaving the canister from side to side, Crossland sent out long lines of liquid fuel around the bedsit, first following the back perimeter of the room and then across the centre of the old mattress that was now pushed up against the far wall.

  He would have less than a couple of minutes before the first signs of the fire would be noticeable in the flat above. It would have been a lot sooner had he not removed the battery from the old smoke detector that was hanging forlornly from the ceiling. Once the fire was underway, he would stroll calmly to the motorbike parked in the neighbouring street and would soon be lost in the London traffic. With a flick of the wrist he struck a match and tossed it onto the corpse, instantly igniting its petrol-soaked woollen jumper. The pale blue flames quickly enveloped the body, and Crossland watched the loops of electrical tape binding the landlord’s body evaporate under the building heat. Free from its physical restraints, the burning corpse slumped forward onto the floor as if it were still alive. Crossland lit another match, tossed it onto the mattress and closed the front door behind him.

  By the time Mil
ton had picked up his mobile phone from his locker at the Fitzroy Lodge Boxing Club, it displayed eight missed calls. With sweat still streaming down his face from twenty minutes of hard sparring, he listened gravely to the first recorded message. Before it had finished playing, Milton was sprinting to the car park. Five minutes later, he and two patrol cars were speeding to Blake’s bedsit address.

  The driver of the leading squad car needn’t have punched the postcode into his vehicle’s satellite navigation system. The plume of smoke could be seen from miles around.

  Chapter 48

  Blake rested the crimson notebook on his lap and stared up at Sabatini. He was speechless. A tidal wave of questions had just broken into his mind, and his brain was reeling to stay afloat. Sabatini moved her chair closer to his.

  ‘Jeova Sanctus Unus: One Holy God. It’s the pseudonym that Newton used in his secret alchemic writings. It’s an anagram of the Latinised version of his name: Jsaacus Neuvtonus,’ said Sabatini.

  Blake just nodded, still unable to form a sentence for himself.

  ‘Brother Nathan found the book as part of an auction lot that the Vatican purchased in 1936 from Sotheby’s, here in London. Inside the back cover is the library’s catalogue stamp. It’s dated 1936,’ said Sabatini. Blake opened the back cover and recognised the faded outline of the Vatican’s crossed-keys coat of arms printed in pale blue ink. As he studied the imprint, he noticed that the last page of the volume had been ripped out, leaving a jagged edge close to the binding. Blake moved restlessly in his seat.

  ‘I’m convinced that Nathan wanted to come to Cambridge to examine Newton’s pocket watch. You see the sentence “For the parts of Prophecy are like the separated parts of a watch”. He must have believed that it somehow held the secret to the rod’s location in St Paul’s Cathedral.’

  Blake’s head was swimming. ‘Hold on,’ he protested, trying to slow Sabatini’s exposition. ‘You think it was the watch the gang was after too?’ said Blake.