The Twelfth Tablet - Ebook

by Tom Harper

  ‘OK.’

  The tunnel ended and spat them out onto a dual carriageway heading east. He found a wheel that reclined the seat and dialled himself back.

  ‘You seem to know Zurich pretty well, considering you just arrived yesterday.’

  ‘I was here for finishing school.’

  He laughed – and after a moment’s thought, she laughed with him. It was the first time he’d heard it, rich and solemn, like the lower register of a harp.

  ‘Don’t you think I’m the finished article?’ she teased.

  ‘You seem more like a work in progress.’

  She liked that. He sat up a little straighter. The moment of intimacy only made him realise how little – nothing at all – he knew about the woman he’d trusted his life to.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  She flicked her head. ‘I had a cosmopolitan childhood.’

  ‘Anywhere in particular?’

  ‘All over.’

  Her tone said he wasn’t going to get anything more geographical. He tried a different angle.

  ‘If you were in my situation – if you had to choose one person to save your life – who would you choose?’

  ‘My sister.’ No hesitation.

  ‘Where’s she.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Paul started to laugh; Valerie cut him short. ‘I’d find her. Or she’d find me. She’s very intuitive.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Anyway, you still haven’t answered that question yourself.’

  ‘I’d choose you.’ He’d rushed it, almost swallowing the words with a sudden fit of anxiety. So many things, and you’re nervous about this? marvelled the voice inside. He glanced across at her, wondering how she’d taken it.

  She slowed the car and eased into a layby. ‘You’d better get in the back. We’re nearly at the border.’

  The boot was small and cramped, though not nearly tight enough to contain his fears. Crossing from Switzerland to Germany was almost like going from England to Scotland: he’d done it half a dozen times and never even had to show his passport. But none of those times had he been wanted for theft and murder.

  The car slowed. He listened to the tyres beneath him, praying they wouldn’t stop. Slower and slower, rolling towards a standstill. He thought he could count every rotation of the wheels. He screwed his eyes almost shut, waiting for the onslaught of light and sound when the guards opened the boot. He thought of all the things he could say in his defence, and realised there was nothing.

  The full weight of his guilt bore down on him. Just in front of his nose, a triangular plastic tag glowed in the darkness. An emergency release handle. He wriggled in the dark, trying to free his arm to reach it. Better to go now, to surrender before they caught him. Anything to be free of the guilt.

  The car picked up speed. Through the seats, he heard Valerie’s muffled voice from the front.

  ‘That was easy.’

  Chapter 5

  Against all the odds, he slept. When he woke, the boot was open and Valerie was standing over him. A vast web of lights floated in the sky above her. It took him a moment to realise it was a skyscraper.

  ‘Frankfurt,’ she said. ‘You didn’t say where, so I found a hotel.’

  Valerie arranged the room; Paul snuck in while the night porter was in the back office. She accompanied him in the lift up to the sixth floor. At two a.m., they had the hotel to themselves.

  The room was comfortable and anonymous: a television, a bathroom, a chair and a queen size bed. Paul took off his coat and shoes and sat on the bed, rubbing his neck where the car boot had cricked it. Valerie stood by the door, neither staying nor going. Just there.

  ‘Are you heading off?’

  ‘I’m too tired.’ She walked over to the chair and removed her shoes. She took off her jacket, unbuttoned her blouse and unzipped her skirt. Paul stared, then tried not to, then realised it didn’t matter what he did. She rolled down her tights, shrugged off her bra and stepped out of her panties as if he wasn’t there. When she turned around, there was no embarrassment on her face, nor any blush of desire. He wished he could say the same.

  ‘I don’t have pyjamas,’ she said. She got into bed and turned out the light. After a moment, Paul undressed and got in with her. He lay there ram-rod straight, feeling the heat coming off her skin but not daring to move in case he offended her.

  ‘You can touch me,’ she informed him from the darkness.

  He rolled over and nestled into her. Her skin was flawless, supple and warm, like bronze fresh from the casting. He laid his head against her breast, breathing in the smell of her perfume and listening to her heart beat under the skin.

  He didn’t want to go to sleep – and when he did, he never wanted to wake up.

  She was dressed when he woke, bare-legged, her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. He watched her a moment from the bed, pretending to sleep. Even after the night before, this felt more revealing: seeing someone who thought they were alone, an actor offstage stripped of mask and costume. Utterly unaware.

  Aware. That was the word for her, he thought. Nothing he’d seen her do, even crossing her legs or straightening her hair, felt spontaneous. Everything was weighed, considered, rehearsed. With other girls, it would have come across as fake, maybe manipulative – but other girls would be doing it for effect, one eye on the audience. Valerie wasn’t like that. She was looking the other way, concentrating on something deep inside her. Paul didn’t understand it. All he knew was he wanted to be in there with her, more than he wanted almost anything.

  She looked at him. ‘Are you ready?’

  He made a show of yawning and rubbing his eyes, though she’d turned away and started boiling the kettle. When he was dressed, she presented him with a cup of tea.

  He turned on the television and watched the news. Fear twisted in his stomach, tighter and tighter as it went on. Then they cut to the weather.

  Nothing about a double-murder in a Zurich suburb, or the theft of a priceless ancient artefact. Other people had died in the last twenty-four hours, in higher concentrations or more dramatic circumstances – a banker’s murder was strictly local news. They probably didn’t even know about the tablet, yet.

  That would be good.

  He wrote down the locker number and the combination on a slip of hotel notepaper and gave it to Valerie. She didn’t read it.

  ‘I don’t suppose I can persuade you to stay with me.’

  She shook her head. He tried to read it for any trace of regret. ‘Ari’s expecting me. You don’t want to disappoint him.’

  She shook his hand, formally. It was hard to believe he’d ever touched her anywhere else. ‘I’ll pay the bill on my way out.’

  He watched her from the window, a soft-focus figure through the polyester curtains. Just before she got in the hire car, he thought he saw her glance up, like a bird cocking its head for danger. The curtains made him invisible, but he still shrank back.

  She’s not the one you have to worry about, he told himself.

  When he looked again, the car had vanished.

  He still had on the clothes he’d been wearing yesterday. In daylight, he could see how shabby they looked: stained with mud from the forest, a tear in the cuff where he’d snagged it on a bramble. He walked down to the station, keeping well muffled in the hat and scarf. He’d have to replace those too, soon, he supposed.

  The thought brought him down – tangible proof of the reality of his new life. Nothing permanent, nothing that could identify him. Nothing true.

  The truth is only what people remember. He wondered how long it would take, if he’d ever stop looking over his shoulder, or waking up in the night when the house creaked. Was it really possible to forget yourself entirely?

  He changed some francs to euros, bought a ticket to Vienna, and some new clothes in the shopping mall that had grown (inevitably) like a cancer on the station. The train was leaving; there was no time to change. He sat in his seat, face buried in a magazine until
they were clear of Frankfurt. Then he locked himself in the toilet and stripped completely, until his old life lay balled on the floor. He felt better. The train rocked and clattered over the tracks, each revolution taking him further towards the future.

  He slipped his hand into the old trouser pockets and took out his wallet. The fifteen hundred francs Ari had given him at the museum still strained the leather, though it looked thinner now he knew what it had really cost him. Now that it was all he had for the rest of his life.

  Not quite all. He reached into his coat and took out the fountain pen from the inside pocket. Nothing fancy – the sort of thing a millionaire Swiss banker would turn his nose up at. Right now, it wouldn’t even write. But it had a wide nib, and a fat barrel. He unscrewed it.

  There was no ink cartridge – that was lying in a luggage locker in Zurich station. Instead, alchemy had turned the ink to gold, a thin scrolled cylinder coiled up inside like a cigarette paper. He’d read that other tablets had been found rolled up in little lockets: he’d never dreamed he’d do it himself. Never dreamed he’d dare.

  He sat on the toilet and unrolled it. A bump in the track jogged his hands; it would be so easy to tear it in two. But it looked unharmed by its adventure.

  Just as well. Working in the museum back office, you picked up a few things that you couldn’t get from the catalogue. Which offers you politely declined if you didn’t want a visit from the Art Squad, and which donors you didn’t press on paperwork. When to count the spoons after certain people had visited the museum, as the curator liked to joke. Which collectors might be interested in an ancient tablet without asking about the provenance. And could pay.

  The train’s vibration was making the tablet tremble. The tiny letters pressed against his thumb: he could almost feel them passing through the pores of his skin into his bloodstream, pumping up his arm to his brain. Slipping into his mind.

  The words of Memory, carved in gold

  For the hour of your death.

  The door banged open and slammed against his knee. Hadn’t he locked it? He looked up.

  The protest died on his lips. Ari stood in the doorway, a screwdriver in his hand and a look of pure fury on his face.

  Paul would have flushed the tablet down the toilet, but the lid was closed. He moved his hand to his mouth, thinking he could swallow it. Ari was too fast. He grabbed Paul’s wrist, inches from his face, and squeezed until he thought the bones would pop. The tablet dropped into Ari’s palm.

  Ari reached back and passed the tablet to someone behind him. Through the open door, hidden before by Ari’s huge frame, Paul saw Valerie standing in the corridor. She snapped the tablet into a metal pencil case, glanced up and down the train, then gave Ari a cool nod.

  ‘Please…’ said Paul.

  He thought at least she might have looked away, shown some hint of regret. But there was nothing. Her dark eyes stared him down until he couldn’t bear it.

  ‘You made your choice,’ she said.

  Too late, he understood what she was. He’d seen her face so many times he should have known – in marble, in bronze, on the goddess in the museum. Utterly without pity, because everything she needed existed within herself and mortals had no claim on her.

  The train went into a tunnel, and the world swallowed him.