Sanctus s-1

by Simon Toyne

  He thought about the ambush on the road, trying to work out where it had gone wrong. He’d dropped the first two guys at the car-hire place outside the main airport, then headed off to the other airport with his cousin Serko to drop off the skinny Hispanic so he could catch his red-eye to the States.

  They’d spotted the dark-haired player in the trench coat just after they’d dropped him off — by the arrivals gate, holding up a sign with the girl’s name on it. He looked like police, but was alone. They’d held back, watching until the girl suddenly appeared on some half-full flight out of London. Kutlar had weighed it up and figured there’d be a nice bonus if he and Serko could jump the guy and come back from the drop-off with the girl in tow, so they’d followed them outside. They almost had a chance to grab her straight off when the chaperone headed for the car while she’d held back for a smoke. Only there’d been some security guys across the road, rousting vagrants from the bus stop. So they’d waited. Followed them in the van. And decided to spring the ambush on the service road.

  The plan had been simple. He was to take care of the babysitter while Serko transferred the girl to the van. Nice and easy. Except the driver had come flying out so fast he’d been knocked backwards and dropped his gun. By the time he’d recovered, a shot had been fired. He’d thrown himself at the man, kicked his gun from his hand, then scrambled back to the van and taken off. Except the girl hadn’t been there. Neither had Serko. As he sped away he’d looked in the rear-view mirror and seen something lying in the road. He’d nearly spun round and gone back until bullets started chewing up his side panels and punched out his window. He only realized he’d been hit when he tried to apply the brakes and his leg wouldn’t move. Going back would have been suicide. He’d had no choice. Dead men couldn’t settle scores. Cousin or no cousin.

  A phone started ringing in the waiting room. Kutlar knew who it was. Wondered how much time he had before they caught up with him. He’d done odd jobs for the Church in the past, mostly low-level acts of intimidation and delivering messages with menaces. Never anything like this. Never kidnapping. Never anything that required a gun. But the money had been too good to turn down. Even so, as soon as the doctor was done he was out of there, pay-off or no. He didn’t want to go down for this. He listened to the phone ringing and wished he hadn’t told them about the clinic. Not that he’d had much choice. The older guy had specifically asked where they should go if there were any casualties. That was the word he’d used — casualties. They should have walked away then. Too late now. Too late for Serko, at least.

  ‘I’ll give you some antibiotics for the fever,’ the fat man said in the voice he’d salvaged from a previous lifetime. ‘It’ll also act as a prophylactic against infection.’

  Kutlar nodded again, felt sweat prickling his scalp and running down his neck and back. Rumour had it that the good doctor had practised proper medicine at one time in his past, before lack of willpower and unfettered access to morphine had been his undoing. ‘You need to go somewhere and rest,’ the doc said. ‘Take it easy until this heals.’

  ‘How long?’ Kutlar croaked, his mouth dry and woolly from the Novocaine or whatever it was he’d had pumped into him.

  The doctor dropped his eyes back to the ragged red hole and examined it like it was some kind of rare orchid. ‘A month, maybe. Couple of weeks at least before you should even try walking on it.’

  The voice from the doorway made them both start. ‘He needs to be good to go when we leave.’

  Kutlar watched Cornelius walk into the room, the waxy patches on his face glistening under the surgical lights. Johann followed close behind. Their red windcheaters were slick with rain. They looked like they’d been dipped in blood.

  ‘OK,’ the fat man said. He knew better than to argue with his clients. ‘I’ll strap it up tight and give him some heavy-duty painkillers.’

  Cornelius stopped by the table and leaned in to examine the wound with a connoisseur’s eye before the doctor started bandaging it up. He looked up at Kutlar and winked, a smile creasing the corners of his eyes and pulling at the pale patches of skin on his cheek. Somewhere within the cold numbness of his leg, Kutlar felt something stir. His friend had been right, the doc had been generous with the meds; but the walls of Novocaine were beginning to crumble and an army of pain was starting to invade.

  The doctor finished dressing the wound and reached for a syringe. ‘I’ll give you some morphine now and some tablets to take with you.’

  A blur of red flashed across the room as Johann grabbed the doctor and covered his mouth. Bloodshot eyes went wide and frantic behind greasy spectacles and snot bubbled from his nose as he started to hyperventilate. Cornelius plucked the syringe from his pudgy fingers and jabbed it through the white sleeve and into his arm. He depressed the plunger and the magnified eyes passed from panic to glassy resignation as the opiates flooded his system. Johann dragged him to a chair and dropped him into it while Cornelius found another ampoule and re-filled the syringe. He stuck it in the same area as the first jab, pushing the plunger until it was empty.

  ‘Tabula Rasa,’ he whispered, glancing over at Kutlar. ‘No witnesses.’

  He withdrew the syringe from the fat man’s arm and stepped closer.

  Kutlar would have run if his leg had been up to it, but he knew it was futile. He wouldn’t even make it out of the room. He thought of Serko lying on the wet road. Hoped these ruthless bastards, whoever they were, would at least catch up with the guy who’d killed him and return the favour. He watched the syringe coming nearer, dangling loosely between Cornelius’s thick fingers, the tip stained pink with the doctor’s blood.

  I hope he’s going to use a different needle, Kutlar thought, before realizing that it didn’t really matter.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Cornelius said. He reached over and took a paper towel from a box on the side table and wrapped the syringe in it. ‘You good to go?’

  Kutlar nodded. Breathed again. Cornelius dropped the syringe in the pocket of his windcheater then grabbed him under the shoulder and helped him to his feet. Kutlar felt the swollen flesh of his leg expanding against the tight bindings. The room began to swim. He tried to take a step but his legs wouldn’t obey him. The last thing he saw before passing out was the image of the dog on the poster, bright-eyed, healthy and ecstatically worm free.

  Chapter 52

  Dawn was beginning to filter through the canopy as Gabriel slid the car to a stop twenty feet short of the quarry edge and killed the engine. The old stoneworks were cut into the rim of mountains to the north of the city, at the end of what had been a major thoroughfare linking up with Ruin’s great northern boulevard. More than a hundred ox carts a day had once rumbled along it, laden with stone for the city.

  Most of the masonry for the public chapel in the centre of Ruin had come from here, so had large portions of the north and west walls. Nowadays the road lay buried beneath thick, scrubby trees and hundreds of years of accumulated leaf mulch, the occasional broken slab jutting like a shattered bone, the only reminder that it was there at all. It was two and a half kilometres off any kind of beaten track and no longer marked on modern maps; almost impossible to find, even in full daylight, unless you knew it was there.

  Gabriel walked to the edge, breathing in the thick primordial smells unlocked by the previous night’s deluge, and looked over. Eighty feet down was a carpet of green algae slicking the surface of a pool whose depth it was impossible to gauge. It was undoubtedly pretty deep. Stone quarries collected water like giant rain butts. He listened for the sound of engines, or dogs, or chainsaws, or anything that would indicate the presence of other people in the area. All he heard was the plop of a few stones falling into the green water far below.

  Satisfied that he was alone, he headed to the back of the car and popped the boot. Staring up at him were the pale, unseeing eyes of the dead man. On his chest a large pink bloom surrounded a small dark hole. He picked up the dead man’s gun; a Glock 22 — weapon of cho
ice for drug dealers, gang-bangers and half the police forces of the Western world. It held fifteen rounds in the clip and another in the chamber. Gabriel racked the breach and ejected a soft-nosed.40 S amp;W with a light charge. The S and W stood for Smith and Wesson, although its detractors claimed it stood for ‘Short and Wimpy’ as the light gunpowder load meant the slug travelled relatively slowly. But there was also no sonic boom, so much less noise — not necessarily a bad thing if you didn’t want to draw too much attention to yourself. But the dead man had not managed to get off a single shot, and now he never would.

  Gabriel reached over the body and hauled two black canvas bags from the back of the boot. He laid them on the ground and unzipped the first. Inside were two large plastic bottles of bleach. He tipped the entire contents of one over the body, making sure to douse all the areas he had touched to destroy any trace of his own DNA. The second bottle was destined for the car’s interior. He wrenched open the rear passenger door.

  Lying in the footwell, partially buried under the driver’s seat, was the bag Liv had been carrying when he’d picked her up. He lifted it out and dropped it on the ground before pouring bleach over anything she might have touched. Then he turned the key in the ignition and hit the window buttons. Three slid down all the way. One was already blown out. He poured the remainder of the bottle over the steering wheel, the gear stick and the driver’s seat, then dropped the empty bottle back into the boot. He took his silenced SIG P228 from his shoulder holster and put a 9mm round through the floor of the boot, then closed the lid and put another round through that.

  He scanned the forest floor for a branch, snapped it in half and brought it over to the Renault. He depressed the clutch and slipped it into first gear, then pushed the stick against the throttle pedal until the engine was revving gently. He jammed the other end against the seat, making sure the steering wheel was centred and pointing straight ahead, then released the handbrake in a single fluid motion and stepped away.

  His weight shifted from the clutch, the car dropped into gear. The front wheels started spinning on the soft ground. For a moment the car remained stationary, until each tyre caught hold of the stone beneath the mat of rotten mulch and it lurched forward. Gabriel watched it pick up speed. The wheels found air and the Renault tipped from view. He heard it strike the quarry wall then there was a slap as it hit the water, silencing the whining engine for ever.

  Gabriel walked over to the edge and looked down. The car was on its back, drifting towards the centre of the pool and sinking as air escaped from the open windows and perforated boot. He watched until it disappeared beneath the surface of the water, leaving nothing behind but a weakening stream of bubbles and a small patch of oil. He cocked his head to one side like a bird of prey.

  In the silence he could hear ripples slapping against the walls below him, getting softer as the memory of what caused them began to fade. It was finally so quiet that the phone ringing in his back pocket sounded like a siren. He snatched it out and flipped it open before it could do so a second time, glancing at the caller ID.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ he said.

  ‘Gabriel,’ said Kathryn Mann. ‘I was beginning to wonder where you were.’

  ‘There was a problem at the airport.’ He glanced down again at the green water. ‘After the girl arrived, someone else showed up. I’ve had to do a bit of housekeeping.’

  There was a pause as she took in the information.

  ‘Is she with you?’

  ‘No. But she’s not with them either.’

  ‘So where is she?’

  ‘Safe. She’ll be with the police by now. I’ll be back in Ruin in about twenty minutes. I’ll find her again.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  He hung up and slipped the phone back in his pocket.

  He kicked the mulchy ground flat again where the wheels had churned it up, then walked over to the second canvas bag. He unzipped it and took out two wheels, several black tubular components and the engine of the portable trail bike he had been using for most of the summer on the Sudan project. Both the frame and the 100cc engine block were aluminium, which made the machine very light, and it folded away so neatly you could strap four of them to a pack horse and take them into some of the most inaccessible regions of the world. It took Gabriel a little less than five minutes to snap it all together.

  He took a black crash helmet from the bag and replaced it with Liv’s holdall and the other empty bag. He zipped it shut, slung it over his shoulder and hopped on to the saddle, bouncing the springs to loosen them. It took a couple of kick starts to work fuel into the engine then it roared into life. Anyone listening would have mistaken it for the sound of a small chainsaw. He swung the bike round, dropped it into gear and headed back down the tyre ruts the Renault had made on the way in.

  Chapter 53

  Liv woke with a start, her heart beating wildly in her chest as if someone was trying to kick their way out of it. She’d just had one of those falling dreams, where you tip forward and jolt yourself awake before you hit the floor. Someone once told her that if you ever fell the whole way it meant you were dead. She’d always wondered how they knew this.

  She raised her head from her arms, squinting against the brightness of the interview room.

  A man was sitting in the chair opposite.

  She jerked back instinctively. The chair creaked against the bolts in the floor that kept it firmly in place.

  ‘Morning,’ the man said. ‘Sleep well?’

  She recognized the voice. ‘Arkadian?’

  ‘That’s me.’ His eyes dropped to a folder lying on the table between them, then back up again. ‘Question is, who are you?’

  Liv looked down at the folder, feeling as though she’d just woken up on Planet Kafka. Next to it was a bag of bread rolls, a full mug of black coffee and what looked like a pack of wet-wipes.

  ‘Closest thing to a shower and breakfast I could rustle up at short notice,’ Arkadian said. ‘Help yourself.’

  Liv reached for the bread, saw the state of her hands, and grabbed the wipes instead.

  ‘Now, I’m a fairly trusting man,’ Arkadian said, watching Liv scrub away at the dried mud and grime between her fingers, ‘so if someone tells me something, I’m inclined to believe them, until something else comes along to persuade me otherwise. Now you gave me a man’s name when I called you up, and that name checked out.’ He glanced down at the folder again.

  Liv felt her throat tighten as she realized what it must contain.

  ‘But you also said that man was your brother — and that’s what I’m having a problem with.’ His brow creased, like a patient and indulgent father who’d been badly let down. ‘You also turn up at the airport in the middle of the night talking about people being ambushed and people being shot, and this also tests my faith, Miss Adamsen.’ He looked at her with sad eyes. ‘There have been no reports of any car shunts near the airport. No reports of gunfire. And, so far, no one has found any bodies lying on any roads. In fact, as of this moment, the only person claiming any of this happened is — ’

  Liv dropped her head and scratched violently at her mud-caked hair, going at it with both hands like a frenzied dog rousting a flea until a shower of what looked like tiny diamonds began to patter down on the tabletop. The frenzied scratching stopped as suddenly as it had begun and her green eyes blazed from her grime-streaked face. ‘You think I always carry bits of shot-out car window around in my hair, just in case I need to back up a story?’

  Arkadian looked at the tiny crystals sparkling across the scarred surface.

  Liv rubbed her eyes with cleanish hands that now smelt of baby lotion. ‘If you don’t believe I was nearly kidnapped, fine. I don’t care. All I want is to go see my brother, have a good cry, then make all the no-doubt tedious arrangements to take him back home.’

  ‘And I’d be more than happy to let you. But I’m not yet convinced that h
e is actually your brother and you’re not just some journalist looking for an exclusive on the big story.’

  A look of confusion clouded Liv’s face. ‘What big story?’

  Arkadian blinked, as if something had just clicked into place in his mind. ‘Answer me one question,’ he said. ‘Since I first spoke to you, have you seen a paper or caught any news reports?’

  Liv shook her head.

  ‘Wait right there.’ Arkadian rapped on the window. The door opened and he disappeared.

  Liv grabbed a bread roll from the bag. It was still warm. She devoured it while she looked out at the scruffy open-plan office through the crack in the door, heard the hum of phone calls and conversation, saw the edges of desks piled high with paperwork. It made her feel strangely at home.

  Arkadian returned just as she was washing the first roll down with the coffee and reaching for a second. He slid yesterday’s evening edition of the newspaper across the table.

  Liv saw the picture on the front page. Felt something inside her break, like it had on the lakeshore in Central Park. Her vision started to swim. She reached out to stroke the grainy image of the bearded man standing on top of the Citadel. A sob wrenched itself from somewhere deep inside her and tears finally began to fall.

  Chapter 54

  Dawn drew everyone back into the great cathedral hall for Matins, the last of the four nocturnes, to bear witness to the death of night and the birth of a new day. Because it carried with it so many powerful symbolic overtones of redemption, rebirth, deliverance from evil, and the triumph of light over darkness it was compulsory for everyone in the Citadel to attend.

  Only today, something was different.

  Athanasius noticed it when Father Malachi was in the middle of one of his rhetorical flights of fancy from the pulpit, and he glanced absently across the lines of red-cassocked guards standing in front of him. Despite the strictness of the rule that all should attend Matins, one of them was missing. At six foot five, Guillermo Rodriguez usually stood out, quite literally, from the others. But today he wasn’t there.