by Sam Christer
The quilt is pulled back on one side of the high, wooden-framed double bed. The indent in the old spring mattress, grey base sheet and crumpled feather pillow show exactly where Nathaniel slept. The other side of the bed is pristine. Gideon feels himself frown. For all Nathaniel’s legendary brilliance and inarguable wealth, his father lived like a squatter and died lonely.
He casts a last look around the little bedroom and notices the remains of an old bell circuit above the door, a hangover from the time a nanny or butler slept here waiting to be called by the master of the house. He is reminded of a boyhood visit one wet weekend to a National Trust home and the single interesting comment from the tour guide: the property, he’d said, was veined with secret passages so servants could pass quickly and discreetly from upstairs to downstairs.
Gideon wonders if his father’s place is the same. He steps out into the corridor, kicking up a swirl of dust motes. He ponders if there’s another room behind Nathaniel’s tiny bedroom.
There isn’t.
The landing runs down to a casement window overlooking the garden. He walks down and to his right sees an odd join in the wallpaper. He taps the wall. It sounds like plasterboard. He knocks a metre to the left and then a metre to the right.
Stone.
He taps again on the board. All over and around it. The plasterboard area is big enough to be a door. There’s no visible handle or hinges, but he’s sure it is. He gets down on his knees and digs, just as he would in an archaeological trench. His fingers find the edge where the skirting board meets the landing floor. He tries to pull it open but it is jammed tight. Out of frustration he pushes rather than pulls.
It bursts open, belching out a breath of musty air.
Gideon bolts upright. A sliver of darkness is cut into the wall. He reaches inside and finds a light switch. He is astonished by what he sees: a narrow room like a very long cupboard. One wall is stacked floor to ceiling with books. Another contains old VHS tapes, some DVDs. Set into the far wall is an old pre-HD plasma TV.
His mind trips into overdrive. Why did his father have a hidden room? What’s on the tapes – and why are they in this place? Why are dozens of books in here and not on show downstairs?
Why was his father so determined to keep all this secret?
PART TWO
18
WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE
SOHO, LONDON
Jake Timberland is thirty-one but tells anyone who doesn’t know better that he’s twenty-seven. There’s something about thirty or over that he simply isn’t ready to have pinned on him. In Jake’s circle of friends, age is like the big birthday badge fastened on your chest when you are a kid, proclaiming ‘I AM 5’. Only at thirty it might as well say ‘I AM Slippers. Carpets. Dogs. Families. Volvos. I AM DULL.’
And dull sure ain’t Jake. Especially on a night when he’s done more chemicals than Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse put together.
He’s not rich. But his father is. Banker bonus rich. The kind that comes from so far back in the family tree that the damn thing must have been a sapling in the garden of Eden when Adam was still pawing around. One day Jake will cop for the lot, but until then he has to make do with a five-million-pound pied-à-terre in Marylebone and an allowance that’s just enough to run the Aston, pay his club bills, make the occasional investment and enjoy the odd night on the town.
Jake is the only son and heir of Lord Joseph Timberland and he’s been papped with some of society’s hottest models, page-three girls and wild-child daughters of ageing rock stars. Sure it helps that your best buddy is a lensman at Heat magazine, but then what are friends for?
Tonight he is dressed to kill. A shimmering silk and cotton blue suit with a plain saturated-blue shirt and new black Italian leather shoes. He already has his sights set on a real hottie. A lithe piece who’s breezed into the VIP area at Chinawhite’s and is acting like she owns the place. Her perfect teeth say she’s American long before you hear her laugh and chat over-loudly to her entourage. Soaring cheekbones, warm brown eyes, carefully scrunched long dark hair and fabulous legs that stretch from a retro dashiki-style miniskirt in green, hot pink and coral. She looks like a film star hippie.
Just watching her sends a rush of blood to his head.
Then she glances his way.
Oh, man. Jake thinks he’s going to blow like an oil well. He floats across the floor, pulled by her sheer sexual gravity. The lithe one is surrounded by lots of pretty young things, boys and girls, but it seems she has eyes only for him.
‘Whoa, fella. Hold up.’
The voice and a big black hand on his chest come out of nowhere.
‘Excuse me.’ Jake peers disdainfully at the big fingers spread like the jaw of a crocodile near his puny white neck. ‘Do you mind?’
He’s speaking polite and perfect English into the face of a man so large he can’t see beyond his shoulder-span. ‘You need to back up a little, sir. The lady over there is having a party and there are no strangers allowed.’
Jake gives in to a nervous laugh. ‘A party without strangers? Just let me introduce myself to the young lady, I’m—’
The crocodile snaps. The finger-jaws grab Jake’s throat and have him walking breathlessly backwards all the way to a seat in the far corner of the VIP lounge.
As he struggles for breath, an older man with short white hair squats on his heels and looks deep into Jake’s eyes. ‘Son, we’re sorry to have had to do that. Now we’re going to order you a complimentary bottle of whatever you like and you’re going to stay right over here and drink it. Okay?’
‘This is my club,’ protests Jake, his voice raspy. He surprises himself by standing up. But once on his feet he has no real idea what he should do next. His way forward is blocked by crocodile man and another black-suited animal. He’d need ladders to climb over them.
Beyond the mountain range of their muscles, his eye again catches that of the beautiful young American. She murmurs to a blonde beside her – and, to Jake’s amazement, starts to walk his way.
There is no mistaking her intention. Her eyes never lose contact with his. Whoever she is, she’s coming over to talk to him.
The mountains shift menacingly towards him but he doesn’t care. They say love hurts. Jake guesses he’s just about to find out precisely how much.
19
Gideon’s mobile is chirping downstairs like a bird trapped in a flue.
He knows he won’t get to it before it trips to his message service but hurries out of his father’s hidden room and tries anyway.
He misses it by seconds.
The voicemail kicks in as he scours the worktops for pen and paper. He finds a rip-and-stick pad by the fridge. The front page bears a rough shopping list – cheese, biscuits, fruit, chocolate – the last supper his father never had.
He plays back the missed call, scribbles down the number and punches it in once the message has ended.
The voice at the other end is a woman’s. ‘CID. DI Baker.’
His hopes drop. ‘This is Gideon Chase, you just called my mobile.’
‘Mr Chase, thanks for ringing. I called to fix a time for you to see your father’s body.’
The words stun him. He’d been fearing this. She’d even asked him about it. But now it’s come he feels totally unprepared. ‘Right. Thank you.’
‘The funeral director is Abrahams and Cunningham on Bleke Street in Shaftesbury. Do you know where I mean?’
‘No. I’m not local, I don’t know the area at all.’
‘Well, it’s easy to find. It’s on the right, not far down from the Ivy Cross roundabout. They’ve suggested ten a.m. tomorrow. If that’s not suitable, I can give you a number and you can make your own arrangements.’
There isn’t a time on the clock face that seems suitable to see the semi-obliterated body of your father. In true English fashion, Gideon says the opposite of what he’s thinking. ‘Yes, that would be fine.’
‘Good. I’ll confirm with them.’
�
�Thanks.’
Megan senses his tension. ‘If you’d like I could get an officer to accompany you. Would that help?’
‘I’ll be okay on my own.’
‘I understand.’ She sounds sympathetic. ‘Call me if you change your mind.’
Gideon hangs up and heads back upstairs.
He re-enters the secret room with a degree of trepidation, worried that the tapes are going to turn out to be pornographic. He tells himself he can live with it. Because it may be worse. It may relate to Nathaniel’s grave-robbing, his tomb-raiding, his highly questionable ‘trade’ in prized artefacts.
He stands for a moment and surveys the room. Years of training have taught him to take in the landscape before you start digging it up. The old saying about needing to know the lie of the land is true in archaeology – the terrain can lie like a faithless lover and lose you years of your life.
He knows that his father was the last person in here before him. The way it is, is how he left it. Generally tidy. Neat, except for a couple of open DVD cases. Orderly. There is a leather desk chair positioned in front of the wall-mounted TV and a low coffee table in the middle of the room. It’s marked with shoe polish on the near side, from where his father must have put his feet while watching the screen. There’s a crystal glass that smells of whisky, but no sign of a decanter or bottle. He suspects the liquor is stashed in one of the built-in cupboards at the bottom of the shelving that fills the room. There are boxes on the back shelves. He wonders how much his father was drinking at the end. Next to the glass is an ancient laptop computer – the type that still takes floppy disks – a notepad and a small and ugly clay pencil holder that he recognises instantly. He made it at school and brought it home for Father’s Day.
He can tell that the room has been used for logging, reviewing and filing. But what? He finds the TV remote control within reaching distance of the chair and turns the set on. Built into the wall beneath it are three shelves, one holding a chunky, near-industrial VHS player, one for a DVD machine and a bottom one that looks like a place to throw junk – cables, open tape boxes and loose coins.
The TV throws up a haze of broken white and black fuzz as it stirs itself. The DVD whirrs into life and fights for channel supremacy. Up on to the screen comes an out-of-focus, grainy picture. It’s a digital copy of old Super 16mm film by the look of it. It sharpens and shows his father reincarnated as a more youthful man, speaking confidently from the stage of a lecture theatre: ‘Stonehenge is a miracle of the ancient world. To build it today, with all of our machinery and mathematical know-how would be impressive. To have begun building it five thousand years ago, without computers, CAD packages, cranes and trucks and barges to carry those monoliths is beyond wonder.’
Gideon is bored already. His childhood had been littered with nonsensical theories about Stonehenge being a temple, a burial place for ancient kings, the world’s first astronomical observatory, a cosmic link to the pyramids in Egypt. And most ignorantly of all, the birthplace of the druids.
He turns off the film and fires up the old VHS machine. It clicks and clunks as the mechanical heads shuffle around and lock on a tape that has been left in there. A big close-up of a beautiful woman’s face appears on screen. Beautiful enough to suck the air from his lungs.
It’s his mother.
She is laughing. Holding her hand up to the camera and looking embarrassed that she’s being filmed. He finds the volume. ‘Turn it off, Nate. I hate that thing, please turn it off.’
Her voice makes him tremble. He can’t help but step forward and put his fingers to the screen.
‘Nate. Enough now!’
The shot pulls wider. Marie Chase sits on a gondola in Venice against a cornflower blue sky. She turns her head from the camera faking annoyance with her husband. Her hair is dark, long and thick – exactly the same texture as Gideon’s – and it is being made to dance on her shoulders by a light summer’s wind. In the background, St Mark’s bobs away as a stripe-shirted boatman punts them across the lagoon. The shot is wide enough now for Gideon to tell that she’s pregnant.
He stops the tape and looks away wet-eyed to the stacked shelves. They’re not all full of home movies, of that he’s sure. The last thing his father watched was his mother because he was reconnecting with happier times, probably the happiest of his life. It’s the kind of thing people do when they’re experiencing the worst of times, the worst of their lives.
Everything on the shelves was important to his father. Important enough to classify and to protect. But not as important as this precious memory of the only woman he really loved.
Gideon walks to the books. They are all red, leather-bound journals, the lineless type favoured by artists and writers. He tries to pull down a volume from the top left-hand corner but the covers are stuck together. He prises them apart.
He opens the book on the first page and reels from another emotional blow. It’s dated the day of his father’s eighteenth birthday.
The handwriting is the same but somehow hesitant:
My name is Nathaniel Chase and today is my eighteenth birthday, the day I come of age. I have made a promise to myself that from this instant onwards I will keep a meticulous record of what I hope will be a long, eventful, happy and successful life. I will record the good and the bad, the honourable and the dishonourable, the things that stir the soul and those that leave me indifferent. My tutors say that much can be learned from history, so perhaps as the years unfold I shall learn much about myself by keeping an honest record of the passing years. No doubt, if I am famous I will publish these small literary missives, and should I be a nonentity then at least in my winter years I shall gain some warmth from looking back and reflecting in the hot optimism of my youth. I am eighteen. A great adventure awaits me.
Gideon finds it too painful to read on. He glances along the rows. Is this stuff in all of them? Every event, emotion and detail of Nathaniel Chase’s great adventure?
He runs a finger along the red spines and counts off the years: his father’s twentieth birthday, his twenty-first, his twenty-sixth – the year he met his wife; his twenty-eighth – the same as Gideon is now; his thirtieth – the year Nathaniel Gregory Chase and Marie Isabel Pritchard married in Cambridge; and his thirty-second – when Gideon was born.
The fluttering fingers stop. He has entered his own space. His eyes drift down to the thirty-eighth year. The year Marie died.
His hands stretch to the slim volume and he begins to lever it out of the vice-like grip of those either side, but he cannot bring himself to remove it. Instead, he jumps on two years. To the fortieth of his father’s life.
He withdraws the diary. Two years after his mother’s death. He feels prepared for whatever the eighth year of his own life has to offer.
Only he isn’t.
It’s not written in English. It’s not written in any recognisable language.
It’s in code.
Gideon pulls out the following year’s book.
Code.
And the year after.
Code.
He rushes to the end of the room and stoops for the final volume. Again he freezes – this book will bear the last entries of Nathaniel Chase’s life.
His heart is like a raging bull butting his rib cage. He swallows hard, lifts the volume from its shelf and opens it.
20
SOHO, LONDON
She smells like cinnamon. And she’s high as a kite.
Jake Timberland notes these things as the beautiful American kisses him goodbye on the pavement. She’s maybe twenty-two at most. And it’s not a peck on the cheek. It’s a proper smacker. She holds his face between her manicured fingers and her lips gently touch his. But he lets her make the running.
And she does. A little brush of the tongue – just a glance against the underside of his upper lip. His eyes dance beneath closed lids. She moves back. ‘Bye.’ A smile and she steps away.
‘Wait.’
She smiles again as she folds hers
elf daintily into the back seat of the limo. The black guy with the crocodile hands slams the door shut and shoots him a look that’s more than just a warning; it’s a declaration of war.
Fuck it. Jake squares his shoulders and approaches the tinted rear window. For the second time that evening, a massive hand explodes like a grenade in the middle of his chest, sending him sprawling. The bodyguard slips into the passenger seat and the limo is gone before Jake’s anywhere near getting to his feet. The most beautiful woman he’s ever met has just watched him fall on his butt. Not a good way to end the evening.
He gets a few strange glances as several couples slalom past into the depths of Soho. The pavement is soaked from an earlier downpour and his clothes are now wet. He brushes himself down and digs in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the mud and grit from his hands.
Something flutters to the floor. He bends and picks it up. It’s a bar mat, the advertising ripped off, and there’s a message in pen on it: ‘Call me tomorrow on number below x.’ Next to the kiss is a small squiggle of a padlock.
Jake stares at the doodle. He knows it. Jesus. Now he understands what all the security was about.
21
Gideon holds the diary in shaking hands. He sits on the room’s hard floor, rests his back against the shelving, afraid to read. He feels beaten – as though assaulted and battered by some invisible enemy. Floored by the ghost of his father.
He looks up at all the handwritten journals around him – a complete personal history of the father he never knew. And the man wrote more than twenty years of it in code.
Why?
He shakes his head and blinks. Darkness presses like shovelled earth against every pane of glass in the house. He feels entombed. Carefully, he opens the cover and on the right-hand inside page is the inscription: ΓΚΝΔΜΥ ΚΛΥ.
