by D C Macey
Turning back into Causewayside, he saw Elaine McPhee and an earnest looking man about his own age standing at the entrance to Helen’s stairway. As Sam joined them, he couldn’t help but notice the difference in their attitudes. Elaine seemed tense while Scottie Brown, the security consultant, was enthused. Scottie shook Sam’s hand as Elaine made the introductions and explained to Sam that they had started earlier in the morning and had already swept the church. Sam felt a sickening lurch in his stomach as his fears were confirmed; they had found a listening device in the office.
According to Scottie, it was top quality kit. The best, a real Rolls Royce. It seemed he viewed the quality of the device as far more noteworthy than its presence. They entered Helen’s flat in silence. It took less than twenty minutes for Scottie to declare the flat clear and it was still well before eleven when they set off for the manse.
There was no policeman on duty at the manse now. The forensic team had finished their work the previous afternoon and media interest had moved on quickly, as it always did. Once again, the trio took the precaution of maintaining silent mode as Elaine produced her set of keys and opened the front door. Working from the front door inwards, the hall was declared clean first. Then the living room too.
They all instinctively shivered when they entered the silent kitchen, felt it bleak for such a lovely summer morning. The clear space in the middle where the kitchen table had once stood told a bitter story. Almost at once, a screech drew their attention to where Scottie was scanning the smoke detector. He gave them the enthusiastic thumbs up of a professional succeeding at his work. Pulling a chair to beneath the smoke detector, he climbed up and quickly extracted a tiny camera and listening device. There he paused for a moment to inspect it with an appreciative professional eye before continuing the sweep.
• • •
Sitting in her office, buried far away from the museum’s public galleries, Suzie Dignan allowed her fingers to stroke the museum dagger. Then they trailed across a gold ring and chain that had been delivered to her from the museum’s secure storage facility. In a plastic sleeve beside them was a sheet of paper, appearance giving away its age: foolscap paper, a small font, closely typed with narrow margins and little white space. More modern was the set of sharply focused photographs that she had pulled from the museum’s photographic records.
Suzie had scanned and printed a full set of copies for Sam. Now she was quietly relishing the moment when artefact and history merge to tell a story. Putting historical artefacts into their proper contexts and telling their stories was her life’s work. She always felt a special thrill when a story or snippet of information could bring some long forgotten or neglected object back to life. This was one such moment. She allowed her hand to continue its glide slowly over the artefacts, exploring their textures, imagining their owners, their lives and dreams.
She had unearthed the museum’s paper record from deep in the archives; files that were themselves close to becoming historical objects in their own right. They were scheduled to be digitised but the archives were vast and steadily expanding as more material came in. The digitization process could never be fully complete.
Notwithstanding the thrill of discovery, today was becoming a little frustrating. She wanted to share her news with Sam, but he had not returned her call of yesterday, and she was going away for a week’s holiday with her sister and baby nephew. Unless he got in touch soon it was all going to have to wait until she got back.
Suzie came to attention as her phone rang. It was a call from the main reception desk. A packet had been delivered for her and one of the porter staff was on the way up to her office with it. Hanging up the phone, Suzie stuffed the document copies into an envelope, sealed it and scribbled a message on the front.
For collection by Sam Cameron, Uni. Archaeology Dept.
You’ll find these interesting; let’s meet when I get back from hols.
Call me.
Suzie.
She was distracted by her phone ringing again and dropped the envelope into her desk’s mail tray. Sitting on the side of her desk, she answered the phone. ‘Hello, Suzie Dignan speaking.’
The museum’s switchboard operator replied. ‘Hi Suzie, you’ve got an outside call, from the university, he works with Sam Cameron, his assistant I think. Sorry, I missed his name.’
‘No problem. Just put him through, thanks,’ the line clicked through but there was only silence, though the line was clearly still live. ‘Hello, Suzie speaking…’ while she waited for the caller to speak a porter entered with a small packet, she waved him in, stretching out her hand for the packet. As he handed it over, the porter pointed at her mail tray and she smiled, nodding agreement. He picked up the contents and left: carrying the mail and her cheerful smile down the corridor with him.
The office fell silent for a moment as she waited for her caller. ‘Hello, it’s Suzie here, can I help you?’ She could almost sense somebody at the other end of the line, somebody listening in the silence. ‘Hello, hello, it’s Suzie here. Is anyone there?’
A deep and muffled voice suddenly broke the silence. And, it wasted no time on pleasantries. ‘Suzie, is that you?’
Suzie was relieved to have a response at last. ‘Yes, it’s me. Look, I need to link up with Sam Camer -’
‘You’ve just had a packet delivered. Yes?’ the voice swept aside her words; a voice used to giving orders, one that did not anticipate argument.
Without thinking, Suzie responded. ‘Yes, it’s here with me now but -’
‘Open it now. It has something you need to see.’
Suzie was feeling a little put out by Sam’s assistant’s attitude. ‘Look, I think you had better put me on to Sam please. I’d rather speak to -’
Once again, Suzie was cut short. ‘We’ve got your baby nephew and your sister too. If you hang up or shout out, they’re dead. Now, shut up. Don’t speak to anyone. Open the packet.’
A chill of fear ran through her body, and she glanced around her empty office. Alone. She trapped the handset between her chin and collarbone and used both hands to scrabble open the packet and pull out the contents; her heart sank as she recognised her sister’s phone, unmistakable with its shocking pink cover encrusted with diamante. ‘What’s going on? What do you want? I don’t -’
‘You were told to shut up. Speak only when you’re spoken to and do exactly as you’re told or they’re dead. Do you understand?’ The voice fell silent, waiting for an answer.
‘Yes, I understand,’ said Suzie, as silent tears of worry and fear welled up in her eyes. She stood, suddenly a little girl, vulnerable, unsupported.
The man’s voice resumed. ‘Good. Do as I instruct and they will be released unharmed,’ her sister’s phone began to sound its familiar ring tone as he spoke. She gasped in shock and stared down at the phone. ‘I am going to hang up now, and you are going to answer your sister’s phone. Answer it now.’ The landline went dead as the caller hung up.
Suzie stood stunned for a moment, dead handset in one hand, ringing phone in the other. The familiar ringtone suddenly seeming harsh, it blared at her like an emergency siren. The ringing persisted until Suzie’s mind focused. Throwing down the dead handset she quickly answered her sister’s phone, raising it to her ear and calling out. ‘Jenny? Jenny, are you all right? How’s little Joe, is he all right? What’s happening?’
A chillingly familiar voice cut her short. ‘Shut up and listen.’ She fell silent at once as the voice continued. ‘I expect absolute obedience, anything less and they die. Do not make any phone calls. If you do, they die. You will not speak to anybody, even in the passing. We are monitoring your every move. Do you understand? Speak now.’
Behind an involuntary sob, Suzie answered. ‘I understand.’
The voice continued. ‘Good, do as I instruct and they will be fine. It won’t take long, behave and you can all be together by teatime. Now you have the dagger, the Templar dagger?’
Suzie was taken aback at the qu
estion. ‘The what? What would you want with that?’
‘Do you have the dagger?’ the voice offered no explanation.
Suzie allowed her eyes to settle on the dagger. Only moments before, she had been happily considering its story. Now it had assumed an air of true menace. The voice gave her instructions that were not to be deviated from. With no time to think or weigh up the dangers involved, she executed the orders.
She dropped her white lab coat, pulled on her light summer jacket, grabbed her shoulder bag and stuffed the dagger, signet ring, chain and all the original documents and photos into it. Then scribbled a note announcing an early lunch date and posted it on her desk. She left her office, walked along the corridor, took the stairway leading from the staff work area to the public galleries and hurried on. In only three minutes she was outside and turned left to head along Chambers Street.
She followed the instructions precisely. Instructions planned to confuse any attempt by others to trace her steps: moving her quickly away from the security camera coverage of the main thoroughfares. Walking to the end of the street, she dodged the traffic to cross George IV Bridge and weaved behind Greyfriar’s Bobby, the famous statue of Edinburgh’s faithful little Skye terrier. From there she ran down Candlemaker Row towards the Grassmarket. At the bottom of the slope, she turned right and hurried on. A little while later she turned right again, suddenly finding herself in one of the ancient, narrow and twisting lanes of the Old Town.
Beyond the first twist, and clear of any CCTV coverage, sat a black Land Rover Discovery, engine running, facing away from her and up the slope. The smoked glass prevented her seeing the occupants as she approached, but she had been seen. The nearside rear door swung open as she reached it. As instructed, she got in, silently and without fuss. The Land Rover immediately drew away from the curb and disappeared round the next twist in the lane. Moments later, it emerged into the flow of mainstream traffic heading south out of the city.
• • •
Standing still in the chill of the manse’s kitchen, Sam and Elaine watched Scottie Brown continue his methodical sweep of the room. A momentary and perverse sense of satisfaction at being right had visited Sam. It faded very quickly, was replaced by a grinding worry. This find was further confirmation that they really did face danger. They faced a truly organised threat, one that could and would go to extreme lengths to achieve its aims. Finally, Scottie stopped and gave them a disappointed shrug, nothing else found; the room was now all clear. He led them across the hall into the study and started the same silent and methodical sweeping process.
Scottie found nothing in the study and ended his sweep of the room by sitting in front of the computer. He plugged in a portable hard drive from where he ran a security scan. The search had hardly started before the computer screen started flashing up a warning, something had been found. The expert allowed the scan to complete before executing a rapid and baffling series of keystrokes that moved and quarantined the infection on to his portable hard drive. He unplugged it and declared the computer clean. He wanted to take a closer look at the bug later, but it too was definitely state of the art. He threw an appreciative glance towards Sam, adding that whoever installed it had full control of the computer, including its camera and microphone.
It took less than half an hour more to sweep up the stairs and through the bedrooms and storage. Eventually the manse was declared clean and Scottie really started to enthuse over the quality of the bugging devices. The equipment quality told him this was an operation mounted by a high worth, high skill organisation, but it did not indicate which one. He speculated that either it would be a top end corporate or perhaps even a national security agency and they sometimes overlapped. He had no way of telling which.
From the landing at the top of the stairs, they could hear the phone ringing downstairs in the study. It quickly cut to answer phone. Whatever the message was, they could not make it out from so far away. Sam looked at Elaine. ‘I suppose we had better go and listen to the messages, just in case there are any urgent ones that you or Helen might need to deal with,’ he said.
Scottie needed to get away, he had paid work to be doing, but once he had a chance to study the bugs he would pass on anything he learnt. He warned them not to hold their breath, such high quality devices were designed not to be traceable. They were meant to be anonymous. He laughed at the answer phone with a parting shot. It was an old model, with a simple form of call screening. As it recorded an incoming message, it played through the loudspeaker at the same time. Any incoming messages recorded would also have been picked up by the bugged computer’s live microphone. He hoped there was nothing sensitive in the recorded messages.
Sam and Elaine saw Scottie off and then they settled down at the desk with a notepad and started to work through the messages. It was a lengthy task. Helen had noted and cleared some of messages the morning before, but had not had time to listen to them all and yet more had poured in since then. Messages seemed to come from all quarters. From distressed parishioners, well-wishers and friends of the church, some from journalists, a tele-salesman, and scattered through the other calls were a few ghoulish and malicious messages revealing the sicker side of modern society.
Suddenly, Sam tuned in a little more intently and Elaine caught his eye as the bouncy voice of an enthusiastic young woman played out:
‘Hello there, message for Helen Johnson. This is Suzie Dignan from the Museum. Sam said I could pass on a message via you if he’s unavailable. I can’t get him on his mobile phone, so perhaps you could pass this on, please? It’s about our old Templar artefact, the dagger that he was so interested in last week; I’ve found more information about it for him…’
Sam barely listened to the rest. ‘My God, when did that come in?’ he looked at Elaine, aghast.
‘You’ll need to call her right away. If they heard that message she’s a sitting duck, God help her. Do you have her number handy?’ said Elaine. Her face showed little emotion but her tone told Sam that his own fears over the girl’s safety were shared.
Sam fished out his phone and called Suzie’s work number. It was answered at once and a reassuring telephonist confirmed that Suzie had only minutes before gone. She had seen her leaving, probably for an early lunch. Sam asked her to ensure Suzie phoned him as soon as she got back. The telephonist was silent for a moment. Then, puzzled, explained Suzie had already been in touch with his office. In fact, the telephonist had herself put the call through to Suzie from Sam’s assistant only a little while before, there was no doubt.
Sam didn’t have an assistant. He hoped the chatty receptionist had made a mistake, hoped Suzie would call him back through the afternoon.
CHAPTER 20 - FRIDAY 14th JUNE
The green pedestrian light shone and a little crowd of pedestrians joined Cassiter in crossing Princes Street to reach the Foot of the Mound. There he paused and looked up the Mound. The short stretch of road snaked like an umbilical cord away from the elegant New Town and up the ridge into the Old Town, joining the two halves of the city. Here at the bottom was the National Gallery of Scotland, the road ran past it and then curled behind and up; tracing the steep manmade slope that now gave easy access to the high ridge of the Old Town. The National Gallery was staging an exhibition that he had been meaning to visit and he hoped to take it in before lunch.
He remained stationary for a moment longer, briefly savouring the thought that he had just entered his own landscape. This was the scene he watched every day from his office window, a constant frame with ever changing details.
Then he turned into the Princes Street Gardens, down the steps, past the floral clock and on into the gardens. He passed mature trees, the varied greens of countless shrubs, and ahead of him were great stretches of carefully tended lawn. The gardens were once the site of a stretch of water known as the Nor Loch, in past times it had provided a watery defence at the foot of the castle rock. Now drained and landscaped, the location provided vital space in the heart of the cit
y.
Cassiter moved at the steady pace of mister average. His destination was the Royal Scots War Memorial, an impressive arc of dressed stone blocks. As perhaps the world’s oldest standing infantry force there was a lot to commemorate. It was a quiet spot in an otherwise busy park. A neutral open-air venue, perfect for a meeting with a very private, very security conscious man.
Ever cautious, Parsol had chosen not to visit Cassiter’s office, avoiding establishing any concrete evidence of a relationship. A chance encounter in a public space was just that, a chance encounter.
Approaching the stones Cassiter could clearly see the whole pathway as it curved round to the other end of the memorial. Two middle-aged women were standing at the main stone, they moved off as he approached. A bunch of flowers left behind hinted at a little of their story.
From the far end, three men approached, walking in a ragged file perhaps three or four metres apart. The uninformed might easily have assumed they were unconnected. The first and last in line were well built and in top physical shape. Cassiter admired the guards’ physical condition with a professional eye. He watched as they discreetly allowed the spacing between them to shrink as the departing women passed by. Nothing was taken for granted. Then, as if by magic, the gaps opened again, allowing the middle man space. He was the leader, tall and upright, though an expertly cut suit masked where his shoulders were just starting to slope a little with the encroaching years: years attested to by an impressively controlled quiff of silver grey hair. Eugene Parsol.
Parsol carried himself with the confidence that screamed aristocrat. Cassiter had dealt with Parsol frequently enough over the years to understand this was no façade. Parsol came from an old family, old money, he expected to lead, expected to be followed. He was never disappointed. Cassiter did not know what Parsol’s interest and motivation in this business was, but knowing the man as he did, knew it would be significant and unswerving.
