The Severance Trilogy Box Set

by Mark McKay

  Nick made his way upstairs, just as WPC Hathaway came in. He mouthed at her to stay where she was, which did not go unnoticed by the man behind the counter. He gave them both a curious look and then returned to his book.

  There seemed to be no one upstairs, just rows of overflowing bookcases. Nick heard the click of a door and then from behind a bookcase the form of a woman emerged. She saw him and stopped.

  ‘Oh, are you...?’

  ‘DCI Severance, we spoke on the phone.’

  ‘You don’t look like a policeman.’ Then she blushed. ‘Sorry, I know that’s a ridiculous thing to say.’

  What the hell does a policeman look like anyway, he wondered. He was 6’3” and around fourteen stone, give or take. He was certainly built like your archetypal policeman. Maybe it was his face, he obviously didn’t look hard enough. He smiled at Charlotte.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s been said before.’ He produced his ID, and while she glanced at it he took the opportunity to study her.

  She had reddish hair like her brother, but more auburn. It was loose and straight at the sides, becoming progressively untamed as it spilled halfway down her back. The eyes were blue and the face fine featured, with pale skin. She wore a blue cotton print dress on a slim frame and her arms were bare. He estimated her age as early thirties, maybe a little younger. She looked at him with concern and confusion and a touch of defiance.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Can we sit somewhere?’

  She led him to an alcoved seating area, overlooking the street. He hated having to tell her.

  ‘When did you last see Simon?’

  ‘This morning, only briefly. Where is he? The phone goes straight to voice mail.’

  ‘I’m afraid he was shot this morning. He died at the scene.’

  The blood drained from her already pale complexion and for a moment he thought she might faint. She took a gasping breath.

  ‘What? I don’t…’ She stared at him in shock. Then a few seconds later found her voice again: ‘Is this some sick joke? Why would someone shoot Simon?’

  He was relieved to see some colour returning to her cheeks. He gave her an account of the shooting in as few words as possible. ‘I hoped you could help me answer your last question,’ he concluded.

  She was too consumed by shock and grief and tears to answer coherently. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Royal London hospital.’

  ‘I want to go home now.’

  ‘We’ll take you.’ Nick got up and signalled Yvonne Hathaway from the top of the stairs. She joined him and together they gently lifted Charlotte to her feet. Yvonne put a reassuring arm around her and took her out to the car while Nick talked to the man downstairs, who had discarded his book and was now casting a concerned look at Charlotte’s retreating back.

  ‘Care to tell me what’s going on?’

  Nick told him. ‘Can you cope without her for a few days?’

  The man thought for a moment. ‘Yes, tell her to call me when she’s feeling better. I’m James Owen by the way. I own this place.’

  ‘Did you know her brother?’

  ‘Met him once or twice. He would come here occasionally. Nice chap.’

  ‘Do you have a card I can take? May need to talk to you again.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mr Owen extracted a card from a pile beside the till and handed it over.

  ‘Thanks.’ Nick left the shop and returned to the car. Yvonne was in back with Charlotte, who was staring out the window with a glazed expression.

  He swung into the driver’s seat. ‘Where’s home?’ he asked quietly.

  It was a two bedroom terrace, near Victoria Park. Charlotte said nothing during the journey until they got close and then she told him where to stop.

  ‘You coming in?’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ Nick replied. ‘There are some formalities and I’d like to ask a few questions.’

  ‘OK.’

  Once inside, Charlotte led them through to a reception room.

  ‘Have a seat. I’ll make something to drink, tea or coffee?’ She seemed to have regained some composure on the drive back, but her expression was haggard and she held her hands balled into two tight fists on either hip.

  ‘Show me where everything is and I’ll do it,’ said Yvonne.

  The two women disappeared into the kitchen and a minute later Charlotte returned alone. She sat down opposite Nick.

  ‘What formalities?’

  ‘I’ll need you to make a formal identification.’

  She looked slightly taken aback, but nodded.

  ‘That’s the first thing. There will be an inquest, which is a standard procedure, as Simon died unnaturally.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And I’d like to ask you some questions about this morning.’

  Yvonne re-appeared with cups of tea. ‘Hope you didn’t want coffee, sir.’

  ‘Tea is fine.’

  ‘He had a meeting this morning,’ said Charlotte, wrapping both hands around the warm mug.

  ‘Yes, I spoke to Rebecca Slade at SOAS. She was expecting him.’

  ‘No, I mean he had a meeting near Liverpool Street Station – the coffee bar.’

  Yvonne had her notebook out and was scribbling away in shorthand.

  ‘With who, do you know?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Not exactly. It was all last minute, she only called him last night. He was quite excited about it, though.’

  ‘What, this was a girlfriend or colleague?’

  ‘Well, he said she’d been referred to him by someone in India. She had some exotic name...’ She paused, trying to remember. ‘Rashida, that was it.’

  ‘Did he say what it was about?’

  Charlotte sighed and stared fixedly at her tea. ‘It was all a bit fantastic really. Simon had only been back from India a few days. Do you know about his job?’

  ‘A researcher at SOAS.’ Nick recounted his conversation with Rebecca, Charlotte regarding him unblinkingly as he did so.

  ‘Yes, he was supposed to be telling them all about what he discovered,’ she said. ‘He was actually an Indologist – Indian history, philosophy, literature. His speciality was the Mauryan period.’ She could see Nick getting slightly lost. ‘Talk to Rebecca about exactly what he was researching, she knows a lot more than I do.’

  She took a sip of tea and then continued. ‘Anyway, as I understand it he went to India because he’d discovered something in an old manuscript, which he said if true would lead to the biggest archaeological find since Tutankhamun. He was pretty circumspect even with me when he came back, said he wanted to see Rebecca and confirm his findings before making wild claims.’

  ‘And where does Rashida fit in?’

  ‘He just said she had another piece of the puzzle and she wanted to share it with him. That was all.’

  ‘Did Rashida call his mobile or the land line?’

  ‘Mobile.’

  Then she left a trace, thought Nick. He wondered how Jamie was getting on with cracking the access to Simon’s phone. ‘You don’t know Simon’s phone password by any chance?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  He decided to leave it there for the moment. He suggested that Charlotte ask someone round for company and she said she would call a friend.

  ‘I’ll let you know about what you need to do next, tomorrow,’ he added. Then he gave her his card. ‘Anything you want to ask or discuss, just call the mobile number. Any time.’

  Yvonne drove on the way back. He stared idly out the window, wondering how anyone could afford house prices in this part of London. No change from £900,000 for a two bedroom terrace in this street. He brought his mind back to Simon Wood. Had he met Rashida in Nero’s? He doubted that anyone named Rashida would turn up on the police report of those interviewed at the scene. It was more logical to assume she was his burka wearing killer.

  And if Simon had indeed stumbled on the biggest archaeological find since Tutankhamun, why the hell would someone kill him?

/>   Chapter 2

  Jamie hadn’t cracked the password by the time Nick got back to the station. He decided to exercise the obvious option and asked Jamie to contact the phone company to get a full list of calls made and received over the last month, though it was entirely possible Simon had used a local SIM card in India. If that was the case, it would be a very short list.

  The two men he’d sent to the Neptune had found no sign of a discarded burka, but they had taken a copy of the hotel register and the CCTV tapes. They were now in the process of eliminating some fifty guests from the enquiry and though this would be a time consuming exercise, Nick was quietly relieved that the number was relatively low. The Neptune was a ‘boutique’ establishment. In his opinion, the murderer had simply gone in to change, but the donkey work still needed to be done. With Yvonne and Jamie he now had four people working on the case. But before he could decide just how many bodies he needed for a functional team, he wanted to understand just how broad the scope of this investigation might be. Rebecca Slade should be able to assist him in that respect. He called her and arranged a meeting for the following morning.

  ‘Tell me about Simon.’

  Rebecca had met him in the reception area of the School for Oriental and African Studies, near Russell Square. They were now seated in her research office on the first floor, a small room with two desks pushed together at its centre and a sea of books lining three walls. The fourth wall was taken up by six filing cabinets, the tops of which were occupied by carved wooden images of the Buddha in various poses of meditation. More books and papers scattered over the floor space threatened to engulf the desks and made easy movement around the place a slightly hazardous business.

  ‘I know it’s a mess,’ she said as she followed his wandering gaze, which then settled on her.

  He thought she must be a little younger than Simon – mid-thirties. She had what he considered to be an intelligent face, with steady enquiring eyes and an expression that made you think she was just on the verge of asking you something. A curious, attractive face. What he hadn’t expected was the Gothic look - her jet black shoulder length hair with a wide streak of purple dyed in at the front and the simple black velvet choker round her neck. She wore rich red lipstick and just a touch of mascara, black jeans and a simple white blouse. The effect was quite striking, he decided.

  ‘Well?’ she asked, with a slight smile.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Do you approve?’

  He laughed. ‘Sorry. You’re not quite what I expected.’

  Her smile receded. ‘What do you want to know about Simon, exactly?’

  ‘What kind of person he was. What he did here, why he was in India. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Where to start… We’d both done South Asian studies and Sanskrit language here. I had a BA, he had a Masters. Then we moved on to this research scholarship for a further three years. This is year two.’

  ‘Researching what?’

  ‘The Mauryan Empire, essentially. One king in particular.’

  ‘I know nothing about this stuff, can you give me the short version?’

  The hint of a smile again. ‘It’s not exactly general knowledge. OK, in India in the third century BC there was a king named Ashoka. He ruled nearly all of India for about thirty-seven years. He was the third king of the Mauryan Empire, which we think began around 317 BC. It ended about fifty years after Ashoka died.’ She got up and started pacing the room, no mean feat with the minor obstacle course littering the carpet. ‘We knew nothing about Ashoka until British explorers working for the East India Company started unearthing things in the late eighteenth century. It was as though he’d been written out of history. Is this too much information?’

  ‘No, carry on.’

  ‘He converted to Buddhism early on in his reign, apparently on remorse following a nasty war. Anyway, he left what were called rock and pillar edicts all over India, proclaiming his faith and how the people should act in light of their new state religion.’ She seated herself once more. ‘A lot of the history was pieced together from ancient accounts of that time that were discovered. But we have a stock of manuscripts that may give us more detail about that period, and Simon and I were working our way through them.’

  ‘I see. So how does this tie in to the greatest archaeological find since Tutankhamun?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Her eyes betrayed a glimmer of excitement. ‘Occasionally we get sent manuscripts, old books and whatever. People go through a recently deceased relative’s estate and they find things. A man in Cambridge sent us a package of manuscripts in Sanskrit that he’d found in his father’s possessions. But he thinks they might have been in the family much longer. Apparently his grandfather was a member of the India Society in Calcutta, in the mid 1800’s. It was, and still is, a centre of oriental study. We think he must have brought these manuscripts back to England.’

  ‘And Simon was looking at these?’

  ‘Yes. There were only three manuscripts. Two had nothing to do with our area of interest, but the third one was extraordinary. We know from previous sources that Ashoka had two children from his first wife Devi, a boy and a girl. But this document tells a story of a third child, a second son named Baladitya. According to this account he was Ashoka’s favourite. But he died aged five.’ She got up again and crossed the room to the filing cabinets. ‘Simon translated all this, I have a copy if you want it.’ She opened a drawer and began searching the files.

  ‘Thanks, but you haven’t told me anything to get excited about yet.’

  ‘Let me quote you the interesting part. Listen: “On the death of Baladitya, Ashoka was overcome with great sadness. He called for the building of a tomb one Yojana’s distance south of his capital, Pataliputra. The tomb was dug deep into the earth and approached underground, through a hall of lions. Four further lions of great splendour guarded the resting place of Baladitya, one to keep watch in each of the four directions. A stupa was then built above the spot and crowned with a golden wheel of the dharma. Ashoka ordered that no more be said or written of the boy now or in the future, so that his resting place should remain undisturbed for ages to come.” Now, that got us interested.’

  ‘And a stupa is..?’

  ‘It’s a half-spherical mound, usually built to contain relics of the Buddha or to commemorate some event in the Buddha’s life. Legend has it that Ashoka built 84,000 of them.’

  ‘I see. So Simon then did what, exactly?’

  ‘He decided to take a working holiday, I guess. This revelation of a third child, coming out of nowhere and not being mentioned anywhere else; he knew there was nothing out there to back it up. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be true. So he decided to see if he could find this stupa. He sent a copy of the translation to the India Society and asked for their help.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Someone called Alexander Marsh emailed him, some ex-pat, thirty years in India and so on. Secretary of the Society, I think. Said although it was a fascinating story, they doubted its authenticity. But Simon insisted on looking into it, so Marsh said he could refer Simon to a guide if he wanted to try and find the site. Gave details of accommodation in Kolkata, as it’s now called. A week later and Simon was off.’

  ‘And did he not contact you while he was there?’

  Rebecca shut the cabinet and returned to her seat, translation in hand.

  ‘I got an email about once a week. Actually, he did nothing much for the first two weeks, just immersed himself in other “interesting bits and pieces” as he put it, at the Society’s offices. Acclimatizing himself to India. Then the third week he went up to Patna, which was Pataliputra in Ashoka’s time. Started looking for stupas, one yojana south of Patna. That’s about eight miles in our language.’

  ‘Did he find anything?’

  Rebecca sighed. ‘Well the problem is in the word “south”. Was it due south, south west, south east? If you put the point of a compass on Patna and draw an arc eight miles south, it beco
mes a lot of ground to cover. I heard nothing from him in week three and then last week all he said was that he might be on to something. All would be revealed when he saw me yesterday. Except he didn’t...’ She suddenly got up and stood at the window, with her back to Nick. For half a minute there was a gaping silence between them.

  ‘Do you know anyone called Rashida?’ Nick asked.

  She turned back to face him and he saw she had tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Were you close?’

  ‘We knew each other for two years. He was a lovely guy, I just don’t understand it. We were colleagues, nothing more. Who’s Rashida?’

  ‘According to Charlotte, he was meeting her at Liverpool Street station. She had another piece of the puzzle, which is apparently what Simon said.’

  ‘That name means nothing to me.’

  ‘OK.’ Nick got up. ‘I’ll take this translation. And here’s my card. It has my email address, can you forward Simon’s emails to me?’

  ‘Yes. What happens next?’

  ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve had time to digest what you’ve told me. Do you mind if I call you with more questions?’

  ‘Of course not. I must speak to Charlotte too, maybe I can help with funeral arrangements and stuff. God…’

  ‘Do you know Charlotte well?’

  ‘Not that well. She would drop in here sometimes and we’d all go out for a beer or two. We get on OK.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch then. Bye for now.’

  He left her staring without apparent interest at her computer monitor as he closed the door behind him.

  He asked Yvonne to contact Charlotte, to get access to whatever Simon might have brought back with him. ‘And you’re looking for a SIM card too, or another phone that he might have used in India.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Find out what contact he had with Charlotte while he was away, specifically emails, and get them forwarded to us. Get a list of all Simon’s friends and find out where Charlotte was at 8.30 on Tuesday morning.’