by Brett Adams
“I have to read this?” I said.
“Yes,” she said, and tapped a fake red fingernail on the English text. For a frightening moment I thought she suspected I couldn’t read.
Resisting the urge to inform her I was a professor of literature, no less, I began: “I hereby undertake . . .”
Somewhere around “kindle therein, any fire or flame” I became aware of another voice, a female voice, echoing my own. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Jane. Or rather, Jane as she might appear in one of those police profiling programs, where they artificially age a missing person. But in her case, it was double the years it should have been. She was beautiful still, but careworn to the point of gauntness.
My shock must have shown, for she interrupted herself to say, “Not the Mona Lisa?”
“Had I but seen you cross the hall, I would have declared myself observer of the transit of Venus.”
She snorted. “Ford Transit, perhaps—but you’re thinking of Thomas Hornsby. He beat you to Venus by two-and-a-half centuries, from these hallowed grounds no less, but then, I guess you knew that, for the Jack Griffen I knew was not one to choose his allusions sloppily.”
“Eh-hem.”
As one we turned toward the counter to find the lady regarding us. With a glance at the unfinished oath, she set me to task again.
I finished in a hurry, and Jane linked her arm through mine and drew me out into the gloomy spaces of the hall.
“How did you know I was here?” I said.
“I saw you standing in the quadrangle looking like a lost kid. You’ve saved me from death by a thousand Saxon inflections.”
“Saxon?” I said. She nodded. “Shit.” And we ambled away.
“Tolkien’s manuscripts are here, you know?” she said, lifting an eyebrow at me, a gesture that definitely belonged to the Jane Worthington I had known.
“Are you flirting with me?”
“I don’t flirt with Tolkien,” she replied. “That was a marriage proposal, you idiot. But enough small talk. Why are you here, Jack?”
Noise swelled as a group of tourists came through the doors.
“Is there somewhere private we can talk?”
She looked at me, picking up my mood.
“Sure, sure. Through the staff entrance, this way.” And she led me between shelves piled with brown manuscripts to a door. She produced an electronic keycard, and we exited into a small square of gravel, which was enclosed on all sides by wings of the library.
The door shut automatically with a buzz that sounded out of place among the old buildings. From behind us, above the door lintel, a pair of stone busts with beards like root-tangle stared down with dead eyes. Beneath them ran the text Schola Moralis Philosophie, which my execrable Latin told me meant, School of Moral Philosophy.
“So, Jonathan Donald Griffen,” said Jane, and I winced. “You have me donning my metaphorical cloak, wielding my metaphorical dagger. What’s afoot?”
I took a breath and launched in feet first. “Did you happen to note the, ah, increased police presence on your way to work this morning?”
She nodded, gaze traveling my face.
“They’re here for me.”
“Assuming you’re not just winding me up, Jack, why would that be?”
“They think I’ve murdered one, maybe two girls.”
She did me the dignity of not asking the question in her eyes.
I continued, “And think I’m here to kill another.”
“Another,” she said, voice flat.
“You.”
“Me?”
“Well, I’m not sure if they know it’s you yet, but they will.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you’re sane.”
She looked sidewise at me. “And you’re . . . not?”
“Jury’s out on that one, but it doesn’t matter: Here’s what you need to know, what you need to believe—”
Motion in the corner of my eye snagged my attention, a dark blur. The blur resolved into a bobby in full uniform. He was slinking through the courtyard. My pulse quickened.
I inclined my head at him, eyes on Jane. “That normal?”
She shook her head ever so slightly.
So the police had narrowed Oxford to the University campus. That had to mean they were looking for Jane, and this cop just hadn’t recognized her yet.
“Do you know a way out of here?” I grabbed her hand, but she shook free.
“Let’s just go and sort this out, right now.”
I grabbed her arm, tight.
“I can’t.”
She pulled away. “Why not?”
“It’s complicated. You have to trust me.”
My pulse beat loud in my ears. A glance at my Mediwatch confirmed my fear: I was orange, pushing red.
“Or you can stand here and watch the Intercontinental Killer have a heart attack.”
Without a word Jane slipped her hand into mine—a lover’s touch to my mugger’s grapple—and led me toward a shadowed arch.
“How’s Kim?”
“Doing well. She’s chair of botany at UC Berkeley.”
“Oh.”
The sun’s warmth vanished from my neck, and in the sudden darkness the world shrank to the feel of Jane’s hand in mine.
When we emerged into the dappled shade of gardens, Jane seemed resolute, but I had no idea where she was taking me. I filled the awkward silence.
“Gotta say, you don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“I was surprised to find the 2012 Chezeaux on my doormat”—she tapped her handbag—“but—”
“What?” I halted but she tugged me onward.
“The wine,” she said, “and chocolates—and don’t ask; yes, I ate them—some habits die hard, and you’re no sweet tooth. But I always share the wine. Let’s find someplace quiet to open it, and you can explain to me what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Now it was my turn to grab her. Snatching her upper arm, I whirled her to a halt, facing me. For the first time there was fear in her eyes.
“Listen. I did not send you chocolates or wine, haven’t done in—what?—a decade? They’re not from me.”
She pulled away, but this time I didn’t let go. She matched my stare as she drew a wine bottle from her bag. A tag dangled from its neck. I grabbed it, turned it right side up and read the following: ‘Save ‘til I arrive. If I don’t make it, drink it and think of me. Jack.’
Jane said, “The wine was always to share, you didn’t need the note.”
My voice rose, “I didn’t write the note, because I didn’t send the wine!”
“Okay, okay, Jack, I get it.”
“No, you don’t. The wine, the chocolates—which you ate! Shit!—are from this psycho. The guy who is actually murdering people.”
The look on her face then, lasting a split second, no more—I’ll remember it forever. It wasn’t fear. It was resignation.
“Yes, Jack, I ate them. And I’m fine.” She tugged her arm from my grasp, and twirled on the spot. “See? Fine.”
Right then my mind chose to remind me of the fourth murder sheet (was that really what we were up to now?). Death by observation.
Was I dooming Jane by simply being here?
Was Hiero having a go at me for not having contacted a friend in so long? Was she supposed to die from lack of Jack?
I laughed at the thought.
Jane’s brow wrinkled with concern.
“I’m fine, too,” I said. “But we should get out of here before a cop recognizes me.”
“And drink this wine,” she insisted, tapping her handbag.
“No. Toss it. Seriously.”
“It’s a Chezeaux. I’m willing to risk it.” Her eyes flashed, and a strange smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
Through a gap in the screen of shrubbery I saw another cop wander past. Their concentration was up. His presence reminded me that I’d been running blind too long. I retrieved my phone, and thum
bed open the web browser. Hiero’s blog loaded up and I scanned the latest post.
It took three bites; three snatches; three saccades.
Hello Oxford town. Rev. Jack Griffen to administer last rites to Jane Worthington, Oxford University.
Wordlessly I passed the phone to Jane. She read, brow furrowed.
“Why is he writing as you?”
“Why does a monkey play with its feces? I don’t know.”
Jane winced. At first I thought at my quip. But her face spasmed a second time.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
My expression dared her to repeat the lie.
She sighed. “Nothing new. Forget it.”
“You need to get checked out.” It scared me how quickly she acceded this time.
“Fine. I know a clinic nearby. We’ll go there, they can ply me with leeches, then we’re drinking this damn wine, Jack.”
She turned about face and that’s when I saw not one, but a baker’s dozen of cops fanning out in the distance.
“Shit,” she breathed. “We can’t go that way. It’ll have to be the Radcliff—” Her voice cut off with a sharp breath.
I examined her more closely. Her face was pale, especially about the eyes. I looked at the cops diffusing through the campus.
“Maybe this is the end of the line, Jane. You need a doctor. Now. We don’t have time to play cat and mouse.”
She ignored me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me away at right angles to the approaching cops. Soon a blocky building eclipsed the sun. If I judged correctly, it was the backside of the old Bodleian.
“Isn’t this just where we came from?”
She continued to ignore me as we wended through a number of corridors, leaving me quickly turned around. We descended two flights of stairs.
Half-remembered facts about the venerable campus percolated through my mind.
“Are we heading for Mendip Cleft?”
Despite my fear for Jane, the memory of the aura of skullduggery surrounding the famous Oxford underground excited me.
Jane glanced at me dismissively. “Pshaw. Do we look like a couple of college drunks on an end-of-semester lark?”
We exited a stairwell into a subterranean space filled with bookshelves and quiet reading spaces. A murmur of conversation was the only sound. Jane strode purposefully between the chairs and stacks, and I began to hope that she was okay. Perhaps the chocolate was simply chocolate, and the wine, simply wine.
Sight of the reading room provoked a pang of jealousy. Students were scattered through it in groups of two or three, or sat alone, reading, poking at laptops. What I would have given to sink into that world. I’d lived in that world once, long ago.
“Mrs Worthington!”
The exclamation startled me into the present.
“Fiona,” said Jane, turning to a red-headed woman seated at a table. She had the air of a student, which belied her 30-something age, and wore a pink woolen cardigan that could not have clashed more with her red hair.
“The Tolkien Beowulf you gave me is divine.” She held a book up in two hands as if it were a baby to baptize. “And why are there policemen in the Bod?”
“I’m glad you like it—” A haze of pain crossed Jane’s brow. “Sorry. Did you say police?”
Fiona nodded eagerly, a curious mixture of avidity and disapproval. “Just a moment ago. Came through the conveyor tunnel like a . . . ” She paused, her gaze hunting dead air for something. “Murder of crows. A blue murder.” Her mind seemed to catch up with her words. She snorted, then giggled.
“Where did they go, Fiona?” I said, intent. Fiona’s gaze floated to me, seemed to see me for the first time.
“Ooh. You’re dishy.” My cheeks felt hot.
“Which way?” Jane said in a strained voice. Her posture had a strange cant, as if she were fighting to stay upright.
“That way,” said Fiona, waving a hand in the direction we were going, her eyes never leaving me.
Without another word, Jane dragged me back the way we had come.
“Why are they here, Mrs Worthington?” Fiona shouted.
Through gritted teeth, Jane muttered, “They’re hunting the Intercontinental Killer.”
Passing the stairway we had emerged from, we entered an odd, elongated room. It was dark, and the stale air smelled of abandonment.
“They must have started at the far end of the conveyor tunnel.” Jane seemed to be speaking to herself. “Why would they do that? Why would they even be down here at all?”
With a sinking feeling, I recalled the last time Hiero had outfoxed me.
“Hiero seems to know where I am at all times. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s played with me. He’s writing a story with me.”
Jane raised her eyebrows, but I felt too drained to elaborate. Hiero had probably sent the cops down here. Maybe this was the story’s last act. The climax. Jack Griffen filled with lead in a dungeon beneath a library. Add another pinch of spice to the storied Oxford underground.
Was this what it was like to live under Fate?
No. Fate was indifferent. The god of this story was positively malign.
The darkness deepened, and we walked in silence. Beside me, running parallel to the wall, was the half-seen bulk of a conveyor. I knew from past reading that it had once, not long ago, transported books from one library building to another beneath Broad Street. It lay silent now, coated in dust that dulled the shine of its steel.
At the far end we ascended another stairwell. By the time we opened a door to peer into the grounds, Jane was puffing like a steam train.
“Right,” she said. “Coast is clear. We’ll have to circle around, but we can make the clinic now.” She didn’t sound as if she were simply humoring me anymore.
I took her hand in mine. She let me.
41
“Just keep driving,” said Marten.
Her eyes were on the lanes seen through the patrol car’s windows, but her mind was elsewhere. Mentally, she was turning puzzle pieces about, trying to imagine what kind of picture included Jack Griffen and Jane Worthington and Oxford.
Hasty digging had connected Jane to the University and Perth. Her tenure had overlapped with Jack’s. But why fly halfway round the world eight years later to kill her? This was different to the exchange students; Marten yearned to know why.
Her eyes snagged on a cluster of red bicycles parked on the cobbles of a lane. A couple passed them on the sidewalk, a bald man and a woman. The man turned to examine the bikes as they passed. They had almost passed out of sight when Marten saw them disappear into a nondescript building.
“We could stop at the station,” said Trent, exasperation leaking into his tone. “It’s a stone’s throw,”
“No. We have phones. If I want to talk to the local constabulary, I can. Until then, I don’t want to be bombarded with pointless chatter and offers of coffee. Most of all, I need to think.”
Trent did his best to suppress a sigh, and pretended to scan the sidewalks and shop fronts.
Marten tried again to place the puzzle piece: Jane Worthington. What would Jack want with her? Why now? Was this a cold grudge brought home?
Nope. Didn’t fit.
Unless Jack Griffen was truly falling apart mentally (possible), the grudge motive didn’t fit with the other girls. It couldn’t be the unifying theme. He had only known—could only have known—the students for at most a year.
Now it was Marten’s turn to sigh. So far the only common trait across all four victims was that they were female. Didn’t take genius to spot that. A pre-schooler could have done it. Heck, her iPhone could have done it.
Maybe it was love spurned? Or any of a number of baseless speculations . . .
“Shit,” she muttered to herself. “Anything to catch a break.”
“Sorry?”
Trent was looking at her askance.
“Nothing. Drive on. Keep your eyes open.”
“You think he’s just
going to be swanning around on the street here after publishing his whereabouts?”
He had a point.
42
I fidgeted.
Next to me, Jane was still as a rock but for the occasional tremor that travelled her body. She was fighting hard to conceal them.
The waiting room was empty. It was lunch hour and the doctor was out. The receptionist had promised he would be back in five minutes.
I retrieved my phone and thumbed it on for something to occupy my hands. I hesitated over the link to Hiero’s blog, then noticed a little red notification icon alerting me to an unread email.
A poke of the icon and the email appeared. It was from my IT friend at the university back home, Matt Price. I read it greedily.
Jack, you didn’t ask, but I couldn’t help it.
What I mean is, I’ve been digging, trying to make sense of your situation. I trust you. I know you didn’t do these things. Anyway, the thing is, I’ve found something. I think it’s big. I’ll write more when I learn more, but I had to get this to you. You sounded kinda hopeless.
This Hiero guy, I managed to intercept traffic traveling via his server. Local email exchange (encrypted, but hey, not everyone is as good as me). I don’t understand everything I’m seeing, but it looks like shorthand for exchanges. Handshakes. Took me a while to nail it, but the traffic I’m seeing reminds me most of army dispatches. Coordinating moves.
Up shot: Hiero isn’t working alone. He might be the trail blazer, but there is another party involved.
More when I can.
Stay safe, Jack. I’m on your side.
Hiero not working alone? The thought was . . . shocking.
And enlivening.
If Hiero wasn’t alone, if there was someone else, well that was a conspiracy. Sure, a conspiracy of two, but the more gears in the machine, the more places to jam a spanner.
A loud clunk broke my concentration.
I turned to find Jane had placed the bottle of wine on the coffee table. It stood in the only clear spot on the surface, surrounded by year-old magazines.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
For an answer, she produced two plastic wine glasses from her handbag, the kind used for camping. She pulled them apart and screwed the stem and base onto each.
