Tayte and Jean were in a black cab heading northwest on Shaftesbury Avenue, fast leaving Piccadilly Circus behind them. Jean was on the seat and Tayte was lying on the floor with his briefcase on his chest. On the other side of the safety partition the driver was animated in his seat.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he called back.
He had a middle-European accent and he kept turning around and glancing down at the man on the floor as if to see whether he was ever going to get up again.
“Just drive and you won’t get any,” Jean said.
They passed the Apollo Theatre towards Soho, passing two police cars going the other way - lights flashing and sirens wailing. Jean leant over Tayte just as his eyes peeled open again. His briefcase felt heavier than ever.
“You okay?” Jean asked.
“I think so.”
Tayte couldn’t see any blood and the only pain he felt was at the back of his head where he’d hit the taxi roof as he fell in and slammed onto the floor. Had he not turned around before he followed Jean in, he would have missed the Prince Charles face mask and the man in the grey suit who had appeared at the Underground station exit they had left just moments before. That novelty mask was beginning to haunt him, but on this occasion it had drawn his eye and probably saved his life. His briefcase and a quick reflex had done the rest.
Tayte sat up and pushed his fingers through the holes in the leather. He popped the clasp and took out his laptop; that and the weight of books and papers he was carrying had stopped the bullets. His laptop was cracked and falling to pieces in his hands and his copy of Marcus’s book had taken a direct hit. He kept a small digital camera in his briefcase, too, which he used to photograph headstones.
“At least my camera’s intact,” he said. “I must have dropped my phone.” He scanned the floor. It wasn’t there.
As he crawled onto the seat next to Jean, the driver turned around again. “Look, it’s none of my business,” he said. Just tell me where you want to go, okay?”
At that point Jean’s BlackBerry rang: a shrill warble that was impossible to miss. It was Fable.
“Yes, we’re okay,” Jean said. “Shaftesbury Avenue. We’ve just crossed Wardour Street.” There was a pause. “Okay. We’ll be there.”
She called through to the driver. “Waterloo Bridge.” To Tayte she added, “Detective Fable wants to meet. He says he’s found something we should know about.”
Chapter Nine
Jean spent the remainder of the taxi ride to Waterloo Bridge on her phone, trying to find out if any of Elliot’s friends had seen him. She looked downbeat and worried again by the time they started to cross the Thames and Tayte didn’t have to ask if she’d had any luck; her expression said it all. He spotted Fable through the conveyor belt of commuters heading home for the day. He was leaning on his elbows over the tubular white rail that ran the length of the bridge, his black suit having stood out because it was the only suit that wasn’t moving.
“Right here,” Tayte said to the driver.
He paid the man and told him to keep the change for his trouble. Then he and Jean stepped out into the cool September breeze that met them off the river. Tayte watched Fable flick a cigarette butt into the churning Thames below and as they approached, the detective turned to meet them.
“Glad you’re okay,” Fable said, although he didn’t look particularly glad about anything. “There was no sign of your attacker at Piccadilly,” he added. “No one obvious. I don’t know how he slipped through but I reckon one grey suit looks the same as any other during rush hour. They’re going over the CCTV recordings now.” To Jean he added, “You think you’d recognise him if you saw him again? I expect they’ll pull a few people in.”
“I think so,” Jean said over the constant rumble of traffic crossing the bridge behind them.
Fable nodded and lit another cigarette. He took a long drag on it, held the smoke in his lungs and then blew it along the river with the breeze.
“Good,” he said. “I’d like to get a composite, too.”
“No problem,” Jean said. Then she told Fable about her son. She reached into her jacket and took out her purse, from which she produced a photograph. She smiled at Elliot’s image as she handed it over.
“It was taken about a year ago,” she said. “He hasn’t changed.”
Tayte caught a glimpse. It showed Jean standing beside her motorbike with an ice cream in her hand. A fresh-faced young man in a white T-shirt was sitting on the bike, the sea breeze tousling his fair hair, his bright smile lighting up the picture. Behind them was a pebble beach and an azure sky.
“An all too rare happy day out,” Jean said.
She gave Fable as much information as she could: Elliot’s mobile phone number, the places he usually frequented and his friends and family contact numbers. She didn’t have his bank details but said she’d get back to him on that.
“We’ll do what we can,” Fable said and Jean thanked him.
He turned back to the river and leant on his elbows again. “We matched the bullet casings found at the scene of Marcus Brown’s murder with the casings recovered from Julian Davenport’s apartment. They came from the same gun - a 9mm Browning semi-automatic.”
Tayte nodded. He’d expected as much. The charts found at Brown’s home as good as tied his friend’s murder to Julian Davenport’s but it was good to confirm it, even though it brought the memory of that painful scene outside Rules restaurant rushing back to him. He really needed to understand why his friend was dead. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the bullets that were meant to end his own life.
“Here,” he said. “These were stopped by my briefcase earlier when we were cut off. “I’m sure they came from the same gun, too.”
Fable produced a clear plastic zip-bag from his pocket. “I’m surprised he used the same gun. It’s a common piece. Inexpensive. Why hang on to it?”
Tayte shrugged and dropped the bullets into Fable’s bag. “Maybe he’s sentimental about it.”
“Yeah, maybe he is.”
Tayte knew that bullet match analysis wasn’t the main reason the detective wanted to see them. “You said you found something we should know about.”
Fable nodded. “Douglas Jones - from the charts. His body was found beside a tree stump in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire. Just the body.”
“Someone cut his head off?” Jean said.
“We get all sorts, believe me. The amount of blood found at the scene and the spray pattern suggested that someone beheaded him right there on the stump. The head was never recovered.”
“Like an old-style execution?” Jean said.
Fable discarded his cigarette butt, nodding. “And he wasn’t the only one. A week later another body was found in the same area. A woman this time. Sarah Groves. Same MO. Different tree stump.”
“Anything tie these people together?” Tayte asked.
Fable lit up again. “I was coming to that. Have either of you ever heard of a society called Quo Veritas?”
Tayte and Jean looked at each other questioningly. They shook their heads.
“It’s Latin,” Jean said as though stating the obvious. “Quo can have several meanings like, this, that, from or where. It can also mean to which or what place. Veritas is more straightforward. It means truth or truthfulness depending on usage.”
“So one way or another it’s about truth?” Tayte said.
Jean nodded. “A simple translation could be, from truth or place of truth.”
“The truth about what?” Tayte mused.
Fable tapped another cigarette free from the packet even though his current smoke had only burnt halfway down the paper. “I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of them,” he said. “Until twenty years ago very few people had. Quo Veritas existed for three hundred years. Then after the murder of Sarah Groves the society disbanded and the killings stopped.”
“So they broke up to protect themselves?” Tayte said.
“See
ms that way.”
“And the victims were both members?”
Fable nodded. “Not just regular followers, either. These were high-ranking members.”
“Three hundred years?” Jean said, almost to herself. To Tayte, she added, “That fits our time frame.”
“What time frame’s that?” Fable asked.
Tayte filled him in, giving him an overview of the five Fellows of the Royal Society who in 1708 were hanged for high treason as Jacobite supporters in what he had come to believe were highly dubious circumstances.
“I think they were up to something,” Tayte said. “Something connected with Queen Anne, but not the attempt on her life they were hanged for. I’m sure of that.”
Jean agreed. “Do you know what Quo Veritas were about? I mean what kind of society they were?”
Fable gave a half-smile, nodding slowly. “It was a Jacobite society. Makes sense after what you’ve just said.”
Tayte wasn’t so sure it did. On one hand they had five men who were hanged as Jacobites in the traditional sense, accused of plotting to assassinate Queen Anne as followers of the Catholic Old Pretender. Now Fable had turned up a Jacobite society in which at least one of its members was a confirmed descendant of the Reverend Charles Naismith, suggesting that the family were Jacobites through and through. Yet there was evidence to suggest that Naismith and his co-conspirators supported Queen Anne and the Protestant faith, and that the Screw Plot charges brought against them had to be false. Tayte recalled Jean had told him that the word ‘Jacobite’ was derived from the Latin, Jacobus, meaning James. In this case for Anne’s father, James II. Anne’s blood was Jacobite blood. He figured that had to be the significant difference. He just couldn’t think why.
Fable started coughing. He turned away and came back red faced. “Excuse me.” He cleared his throat. “Most of what came out about Quo Veritas was down to an investigative journalist working for the Nottingham Post. Someone called Ewan Stockwell.”
“Can we talk to him?” Jean said.
“Not a chance. He disappeared a couple of months after the Groves murder.”
“Anything turn up later on?” Tayte asked. “A body?”
“Not a trace.”
They all gazed along the river in silence for several seconds, watching the boats and the varied skyline of buildings old and new. Jean was first to break the silence.
“So what’s our connection?”
It was something Tayte had been considering. “I believe the victims could all be related to our five Royal Society Fellows. We already know that Davenport and Jones were related to Naismith. Davenport might also have been a member of Quo Veritas.”
“Difficult to prove,” Fable offered. “Since it’s now defunct.”
Tayte agreed. “But the relationship between Julian Davenport and Douglas Jones, who was a confirmed member, connects them. They were both related to Naismith according to Marcus’s charts. And they’re connected through the fact that they were both murdered. Twenty years ago the killer cut off his victims’ heads, the society disbanded and now he’s caught up with them again to finish the job - only now he shoots them.”
“Different MO," Fable said. “It could be the same person but I think it’s more likely to be someone else.”
Tayte had to concede that Fable was probably right. Beheading someone on a tree stump was highly ritualistic. It carried with it some message that the killer felt very strongly about beyond the act of killing itself. Even twenty years was unlikely to have changed that.
“Either way,” Jean said. “It looks like they’re after the same thing and it concerns the members of Quo Veritas, of which two or maybe three high-ranking members are now dead.”
Tayte rifled through the papers in his briefcase. He pulled out a sheet of A4 paper and handed it to Fable. It contained the names of the Royal Society Fellows they were interested in with a bullet hole just below the entry for Sir Stephen Henley.
“So let’s say for now that the killer’s victims are descendants of these men,” Tayte said. “Two are already confirmed. If we can connect Sarah Groves to any one of them I’d say my theory’s sound. In which case we can work out who the next victims are likely to be and hopefully get to them first. And if we can do that, maybe they can tell us what this is all about.”
Fable studied the list. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“I do,” Tayte said. “But it would take too long by myself. We need a team. Maybe twenty people. The more the better.”
“The genealogy convention,” Jean said.
Tayte nodded. He checked his watch. To Fable he said, “If you’re quick you should be able to rally all the support you need.”
He told him about the convention at the Docklands Arena and how some of the best genealogists on the planet were already in London.
“I’m sure they’ll be only too happy to help,” he added, backing away as he scanned the traffic for another taxi.
“And what about you?”
“I’m sticking with Marcus’s research,” Tayte said.
“We’re going to see some friends of mine,” Jean added.
Tayte spotted a black cab and waved it down. “Get a team together at Kew and tell them they need to identify the current descendants of the people on that list - the heirs via each generation’s firstborn dependant. Tell them to start with Sarah Groves and work back to confirm things.”
“Firstborn,” Fable repeated. “Got it.”
A taxi pulled up and Jean gave the driver an address for a university somewhere in the Bloomsbury area.
“Ms Summer,” Fable called. “What about my identity parade? My composite?”
Tayte turned back. “Identify the descendants,” he said. “That’s how you’ll get your man.”
Lying in the pitch-black boot of an unmarked police car, the man in the smart grey suit had had plenty of time and solitude to consider how careless he’d been. He’d put himself at risk and he’d put the man who had pulled him out of there at risk - not that it had been difficult. The brief flash of a Specialist Operations Metropolitan Police Service badge as they cleared the quarter-mile perimeter checkpoints around Piccadilly had guaranteed their unquestioned passage. But it should not have come to that. He knew he had jeopardised everything they were working towards.
You never make it personal, he thought. And you let the woman see your face. What the hell were you thinking? In and out - that’s how you do it. You don’t ponce about chasing people on foot. Once the element of surprise is gone, that’s it. It’s over. You go back to the car and drive calmly away.
He calculated that he’d been in the cramped boot for thirty minutes or so. They were heading east. Not much further now. He was sick of the slow rush-hour traffic. He wanted to straighten his legs, kick his feet right through the damn wing, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t relax either and that only made things worse. The problem was that he couldn’t stop thinking about the American and Jean Summer and the fact that they were both still alive.
They’re making you look like a fucking amateur! he thought. And the problem with that was that it did make things personal. It made things very personal.
When the car finally stopped and he heard the driver’s door open and close with a thump, he turned his thoughts to the bigger objective - to the string of binary numbers that was not yet complete.
Don’t lose sight of that. You need to stay focused. Need to hurry now.
The boot popped open and daylight momentarily blinded him. When his eyes adjusted he saw locked gates ahead and through them the shell of an Edwardian gasworks, now derelict with its bare steel framework, broken windows and crumbling brickwork. It was quiet there. No one around to witness his activities. Just one pot-holed road in and out.
Tonight, he thought as he eyed the grey portacabin that was just inside the gates. He reached into his pocket for the keys. You can get out of the suit. Lie low for a while. Watch the news reports and slip out again later.
&n
bsp; Chapter Ten
Jean’s best-kept secret was a small group of history students she’d taught a few years ago when they were studying for their degrees. They were all in their twenties and were now working on their doctorates at the Birkbeck University of London. Jean’s phone call from the taxi on the way to the university had forced a change of address to a pub she knew well.
“It’s their local,” she said to Tayte as the taxi pulled up outside.
“And they’re your best-kept secret because?”
A smile washed over Jean’s face and Tayte was glad to see it again. “Let’s just say that as far as their chosen subject is concerned they share some pretty unorthodox views.”
They approached the bar’s narrow, predominantly glass facade and Tayte jumped ahead and opened the door for her. The gesture seemed to take her aback. She stopped and stared at him.
“I didn’t have you pegged as the old-fashioned type.”
“Usually, I’m not,” Tayte said. “I mean, I wouldn’t really know. I’ve had so little practice.” He almost laughed. “I guess seeing me do that would have surprised Marcus, too.”
“Is that why you did it?”
Tayte shrugged and followed Jean inside. “Maybe.”
The bar ran deep into the stonework building. Soft lighting cast an amber glow over decor that was a blend of modern furnishings and old architecture, with arches and pillars, high tables with stools and a long, polished brass-plate bar. It was busy and consequently loud with competing voices that drowned out the background music. Tayte could smell the bitter tang of alcohol in the air and on the breath of the people consuming it.
“There they are,” Jean said, heading further in.
Tayte didn’t have to look too hard to see who she meant. There was a gathering around one of the tables - some people sitting, others standing. The centre of attention was a young, overweight man with greasy-looking fair hair. He wore three-quarter-length khaki shorts and a black T-shirt that bore the words, ‘HISTORY: from the Greek - historia. Knowledge acquired by investigation. The study of the human past.’
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