The Twelfth Tablet - Ebook

by Tom Harper

  ‘Vincent’s going to take the photographs,’ Valerie said. She reached across the seat and held his hand. ‘Where are we going?’

  Her hand was soft and dry as powder. Paul looked at the mirror again and saw the hard eyes still watching.

  He gave an address in District 8, Seestrasse, where the big mansions crowded the lakeshore. ‘I spoke to him this morning. It’s all set.’

  He tried to sound confident, like he imagined Ari would. Not the way he’d felt taking the file out of the locked cabinet; the way his fingers had trembled as he dialled the number; the terror that the curator would come back early from lunch and overhear his conversation.

  ‘I told him there’d been a question from the insurance company, that they needed proof the tablet had been returned in perfect condition in case of a later claim.’

  ‘And he agreed?’

  ‘People believe anything about insurance companies.’

  The car butted through the early evening traffic and headed out of town. Valerie didn’t say anything about what would happen when they got there, and Paul didn’t ask. The less he thought about it, the better. He held her hand, his arm stretched awkwardly across the wide seat, trying to stop his mind wandering to forbidden places. But each time he tried to extract his hand, Valerie’s fingers tightened around his. As if she was determined to give him strength.

  And then they were there.

  Even in the second decade of the twenty-first century – and especially in Switzerland – there were people old enough and discreet enough to have left almost no ripple on the internet. Hans Stroehlein was one. From office gossip, Paul knew he worked in private banking, last in the line of a family who’d been turning out heirs like clockwork for two hundred years. From the one meeting they’d had for the exhibition, he remembered a trim man in the vicinity of sixty, precise in his appearance and economical in what he said.

  He couldn’t be more Swiss if he popped out of a clock. The curator, an Italian, had said that – once Stroehlein was out of the museum with his signature on the loan agreement.

  The Mercedes stopped at an iron gate, which opened when Paul spoke into an intercom. Ahead, he saw a turreted mansion, a minor fairytale, and a terrace sloping towards a pleasure-cruiser moored on the lake.

  ‘Nice place,’ said Paul, trying to break his own tension.

  Valerie picked at a loose thread on the leather door-handle. ‘It’s cute.’

  ‘I suppose you and Ari must be used to it. Where you live.’

  She looked at him as though he was speaking a foreign language. He remembered she’d said they lived on a boat. ‘Ari’s is bigger.’ He wondered if she meant the house or the boat.

  The light surprised him when he got out of the car. The darkened windows had made it look later than it was. He waited for Valerie.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’ll stay.’ The car shook as the driver’s door slammed. ‘Vincent’s going with you.’

  Paul glanced at Vincent, seeing him from the front for the first time. It wasn’t an improvement. If Paul had met him on a train, he might have chosen a different carriage.

  A small grey camera bag hung around Vincent’s neck, and a heavier one was slung across his shoulders. He jerked his thumb at the house. Across the lake, the last edge of the sun slipped behind the mountains. A cool breeze picked up off the water, blowing dust in Paul’s eyes. Suddenly, he knew he should feel afraid.

  He looked back into the car.

  ‘I’ll be right here for you,’ said Valerie.

  Vincent was already at the door. Reluctantly, Paul joined him. Traffic rushed by outside, but the iron gates held the noise back. All he heard was the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel. He wanted to turn and run, but Vincent’s presence held him like a force of gravity.

  They obviously knew he was coming. The moment he knocked, the door was opened by a… what? A servant? A butler? A PA? He didn’t know what you called them these days. Paul handed him a card with the museum’s crest. The butler studied it, studied Paul, and gave Vincent a narrow look.

  ‘The photographer,’ said Paul. ‘From the insurance company.’

  The butler showed them down a short corridor to a sitting room-cum-library. It was built like a medieval hall in the heart of the house, rising two stories to a domed skylight. Knights and damsels floated in the glass like angels. Wooden galleries ringed the first floor, leather-bound books covered the walls, and unlit logs lay piled in the huge stone hearth. In front of it, two sofas faced each other across a coffee table, where a silver tray, a silver coffee pot and a silver cigarette case were laid out with cups and biscuits.

  Hans Stroehlein rose to greet them and shook hands. No smile, but no hint of irritation either. Paul supposed a Swiss banker was used to excessive bureaucracy. And hiding his feelings.

  ‘I hope this is necessary. I did not quite understand on the telephone why it is so urgent.’

  ‘Just a formality,’ Paul promised. He realised he was grinning like a clown, and shut his mouth. ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Is there a problem with the insurance? I have not made any claim.’

  ‘No. No problem. No problem at all.’ Sweat prickled his skin, as though he had a temperature coming on. He looked at Vincent for help, but Vincent was busy screwing a fat lens onto the camera he’d taken out of his bag.

  ‘You have some papers?’

  ‘What? Yes, of course.’ He opened his satchel and got the paperwork he’d cribbed together in the office. Stroehlein put on a pair of rimless glasses and frowned.

  ‘I have signed this already. When the piece was returned, after the exhibition.’

  Does he suspect? No, Paul calmed himself. He’s just precise. Fastidious.

  ‘You won’t believe this, but someone lost the original. I just need to witness the signature. And the photographs, of course.’

  Stroehlein read it through carefully. Paul ate a biscuit and spilled crumbs on the sofa. He examined the room, trying to ignore Vincent, fiddling with his camera. A grand piano, a Bechstein, filled one corner. A younger Stroehlein in an old-fashioned suit watched from a black-and-white photograph on top of it. A slender woman in a white dress rested her hand on his arm.

  Widowed, Paul remembered from somewhere. No children.

  At last, Stroehlein reached the end. He looked up.

  ‘I cannot sign this.’

  Paul froze. What did I do wrong? He’d already signed it once. This was just a photocopy with the signature whited out. What could he possibly object to?

  A precise smile. ‘I do not have a pen with me.’

  Humour. Paul tried to restart his heart as he found the fountain pen in his jacket pocket. Stroehlein signed, frowning slightly at the cheap pen. Paul took out the stamp he’d borrowed from the office and thumped the museum’s crest over the signature. A nice touch, he thought. The Swiss loved stamps.

  ‘And now, if we could just take the photograph?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  Stroehlein unclasped the cigarette case and laid it open. For a moment, Paul forgot everything. Gold gleamed inside the silver, a thin leaf no bigger than a book of matches. The letters were so tiny you could barely make them out. He wondered how anyone had ever managed to write it – or why they’d felt the need.

  ‘Handle it carefully,’ Stroehlein warned.

  Vincent unrolled a black rubber mat and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. With surprising delicacy, he arranged the tablet on the mat and put a red-and-white reference scale alongside it. Kneeling beside the table, he held his camera over the tablet and fired off half a dozen shots.

  ‘It’s an amazing piece,’ said Paul.

  ‘My father bought it in Naples, before the war. Now, of course, they would not let it out of the country. He was not an impulsive man, or a romantic, but it bewitched him. He had to have it. All of his life, he was certain there is some sort of key inside the tablet. The secret of immortality.’

  He laughed. ‘Of course, th
is is nonsense.’

  Paul remembered Ari saying something similar – the whole point, in fact. He looked at Vincent’s camera. It looked perfectly normal to him, but perhaps the infrared apparatus was in the lens. He didn’t know much about photography.

  Vincent had finished. He stood up and began packing the camera away. Stroehlein laid the tablet back in the cigarette case and rested it open on his lap, contemplating it. Reflected light shone gold on his face.

  ‘Are you ever tempted to sell?’ Paul asked.

  Stroehlein shook his head. ‘The tablet promises immortality. Who can put a price on that?’

  ‘If you ever do, let me know.’ And then, clumsily: ‘I know someone who might be interested.’

  ‘Are you making me an offer?’ Stroehlein’s banking antennae didn’t miss the subtext. He closed the case; the golden light disappeared.

  ‘Why are you here, exactly?’

  Paul felt the guilt flooding his face and couldn’t stop it. ‘The insurance. The exhibition.’ He glanced at Vincent, who was fiddling with something in his camera bag. ‘Anyway, we’re finished.’

  ‘Does the curator know you are here?’ Stroehlein took his phone out of his pocket and began searching for a number. ‘Or is this, what you are doing, freelance work? An insurance claim that nobody has made. Papers I have already signed. What are you doing?’

  Everything after that happened in the wrong order. Paul had begun to speak, when he realised Stroehlein’s last sentence had been shouted over his shoulder. He looked back and saw Vincent standing by the piano, a pistol extended in his hand. He heard a bang, though Vincent hadn’t moved. He turned again, just in time to see Stroehlein falling backwards into the fireplace. His head snapped forward as it hit the edge of the grate, but he didn’t scream. Blood welled from a small round hole punched through his forehead.

  Chapter 3

  Sight, sound and time came together again – though slower than before. Paul stood by the sofa, numb with horror. Vincent didn’t hesitate. He crossed the room, stood over Stroehlein’s body and aimed the pistol at his skull.

  ‘No,’ Paul mouthed.

  He closed his eyes. The bang seemed to shake him apart. When he looked again, there was more blood, and Vincent picking up the cigarette case where it had fallen on the floor.

  ‘We must go,’ said Vincent.

  Some dislocated corner of Paul’s mind noticed it was the first thing he’d heard Vincent say. He still didn’t move. Vincent shoved the cigarette case in his jeans, grabbed Paul and dragged him down the corridor.

  He’s a murderer. I’m being kidnapped by a murderer. But he needed to escape, and Vincent was taking him in the right direction. They were at the front door. Vincent yanked the handle and–

  –nothing happened. The door wouldn’t open. Vincent pulled hard enough to fell a tree; he kicked and rattled it in its frame. But the reinforced door didn’t move.

  Below the handle, a brass keyhole pouted out of the door. Vincent made a slow turn, scanning the walls and furniture.

  ‘Puta,’ he swore.

  He ran back to the library. Framed by the end of the corridor, Paul saw him crouch by the fireplace and rummage through Stroehlein’s pockets.

  Now’s your chance. It was a big house – there must be somewhere he could hide, call the police and wait it out until Vincent had gone.

  And what will you tell the police? the voice in his head asked. You made the appointment. You brought Vincent here. You’re an accomplice.

  In the library, Vincent stood. His face said he hadn’t found the key. He started back towards the door…

  Too late to run, thought Paul.

  ...then stopped. His head jerked round, up towards the first floor gallery that was out of Paul’s sight. He lifted his pistol.

  Again, the picture and the sound disconnected. The shot came, but Vincent hadn’t fired. He staggered backwards as though he’d slipped on something. More shots followed – two or three, Paul couldn’t tell – much louder than the one that had killed Stroehlein. Feathers billowed out of a sofa cushion where one of the bullets had missed Vincent, or maybe gone right through him. They fluttered down, settling on his body like snow on a log.

  A pair of feet appeared on the library stairs. Then a torso, cradling what looked like some sort of assault rifle.

  Switzerland’s one of the most heavily armed countries in the world, Paul remembered. You do your military service, and then you keep your gun.

  The butler descended. Or perhaps the word was bodyguard. He saw Paul at the end of the corridor and pointed the rifle at him – unsteadily. The hand that gripped the barrel trembled; the muzzle wavered. Paul couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  Because he couldn’t think of anything better to do, Paul raised his hands. Even that movement made the gun jab up aggressively. Paul almost fainted.

  ‘What have you done?’ the butler shouted, a hysterical voice verging on a scream. ‘What have you done?’

  Not a bodyguard, Paul decided. He hadn’t expected to use the rifle – certainly not to kill. He was improvising.

  That didn’t reassure him.

  The butler stopped about three feet away. Way too close for comfort, but too far for Paul to even think about trying to grab the gun. His senses had parted company again: his eyes saw everything with a hyper-real clarity, while his ears couldn’t make out a thing. The butler’s shouts came through like a tape being played at double speed. All he caught was ‘mörder’ – murderer, repeated over and over – and also ‘polizei’.

  And then the voice stopped – drowned out by a torrent of noise that came instantly and from nowhere. An explosion; a roar like a jet engine; a klaxon shriek that ripped through his bones. Something hit him in the chest. He threw himself to the floor. Had he been shot?

  His face was wet – soaked. Not with blood but with water, still spraying down on him from a sprinkler head in the ceiling. The butler had had it worse – the high-pressure spray must have caught him right in the eyes. He reeled back, clutching his face with one hand while the other swung the rifle wildly.

  Perhaps it was instinct – or the release of something that had been building ever since Vincent pulled out his gun. All Paul wanted was the rifle to point away from him. He got off the floor and lunged for it.

  The butler glimpsed him coming, but Paul already had his hands on the rifle. Water made it slick; he was surprised how heavy it was. For a moment they wrestled it between them like children. Then – whether his hand slipped, or whether desperation made Paul strong – the butler let go. Paul tore the rifle out of his grip.

  Almost before he had it, he felt the gun hit something hard. It shuddered. The butler suddenly stopped fighting and dropped to the floor.

  The rifle. Paul looked at the thin line of blood dribbling down the butler’s temple, then at the gun in his hands.

  Did I do that? The stock must have clubbed the side of his head.

  The fire alarm was still going: smoke from the gunshots must have triggered it. Paul couldn’t think: he just wanted to get out. Dazed, he reached out for the door handle again. It opened. It must have unlocked automatically with the alarm.

  He stumbled out. For a moment, the cool quiet was a blessing; then he started shivering uncontrollably. The sprinkler had soaked through his suit. He staggered to the car and hauled open the door. Valerie was still sitting in the back, her knees drawn up to her chest on the vast seat.

  Valerie gasped as she saw the assault rifle in his arms. ‘What happened?’ she mouthed.

  The ringing alarm and the ringing in his ears left him deaf. He started to say something, gave up.

  He opened the driver’s door and slid the rifle across onto the passenger seat. The keys were in the ignition, thank God. He couldn’t hear sirens – couldn’t hear much of anything – but he knew they must be coming. If the butler hadn’t called the police, the fire alarm would have tipped them off.

  Valerie leaned forward between the seats. She had to shout in
his ear. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘The police.’ Paul had already started the engine. He wasted precious seconds searching for the clutch with his foot, before he noticed the automatic gear shifter sticking out of the console. He put it into drive.

  ‘What about the tablet?’

  ‘Shut the door,’ he told her.

  ‘Ari will kill us if we don’t have it.’

  I’ll kill Ari if I see him. He glanced at the rifle in the footwell. I could really do it. In other circumstances, the thought would have horrified him.

  Valerie reached through and pushed the gear-shift back into Park. The engine jolted so hard he half expected it to drop out of the car.

  He stared at Valerie. The rifle loomed large in the corner of his eye. Black mascara tears ran down her cheek, but her voice was clearer than he’d ever heard it before.

  ‘Get the tablet. Otherwise, there’s no chance.’

  The moment he got out of the car, he heard sirens. In the distance, but getting closer. He tried to run, but his legs had gone soft. He staggered across the gravel like a drunk. The noise of the sirens seemed to slow him down.

  The butler still lay in the front hall; Vincent was in the library. Getting the tablet out of his pocket was harder than he’d thought: he had to roll the man over, a big dead weight that fought him all the way. He prised the cigarette case out of his pocket. He didn’t bother to check for a pulse. He managed not to vomit.

  Rising sirens chased him back to the car. He kept staring at the gate, waiting for a pair of flashing lights to screech through and block the Mercedes. Maybe part of him wanted it – an ending, no more choices.

  The gates gaped wide apart. The same alarm mechanism that had unlocked the front door must have opened them too. He got in the car, selected Drive. The moment he touched the accelerator, the big engine responded like a rocket. The car bounded through the front gates, almost broadsiding a minivan coming down the main road. Horns blared, rubber squealed: Paul lurched the car around and onto the outbound carriageway.

  Blue lights wobbled in the mirror, a way back but coming quickly. He was so busy looking at them he almost drove straight into the car in front. Brakes, more horns, more angry flashing lights. When he checked the mirror again, the blue lights had gone. They must have reached the house.