The Secrets of Life and Death (3 page)

‘Back, rat-man,’ she warned.

‘Hostile, Jack.’ His voice was full of hissing sounds, and he leaned forward into the faint light, squinting at her. ‘That’s no way to treat a business associate.’ He reached for the bag but she stepped back, one hand reaching out for the symbols she had sketched on the bricks.

‘I mean it. Remember last time?’

He choked a cracked laugh, the dog-fox reek of him hitting her. ‘We could conduct our transaction in the pub like proper partners. Then I could have a good look at my merchandise.’

‘In there, with you?’ She laughed back, at the thought of taking the raggedy man into the pub. ‘Just throw me the money.’

He bent over one pocket, drew something out. ‘You and I are two of a kind,
Jackdaw
.’ He waved the packet at her. ‘The money’s good. Give me the stuff.’

She hesitated, four grams of prepared bone dust grinding like sand in the plastic between her fingers.

‘What’s it going to be used for? Is this more weird voodoo shit?’

He shuffled half a pace closer, almost within reach. She kept an eye on him, even as her hand hovered over the chalked sigils behind her.

‘What do you care?’ He snorted. ‘Think of it as lucky charms for the modern executive. There’s a stockbroker staying on the coast, just needs to knock up a few talismans.’ He tossed the packet over with a quick movement, making her jump.

‘Get back,’ she growled at him, every muscle braced against attack. She was aware of a movement in the road ahead. ‘You better not have brought your human Rottweilers with you.’ She weighed the package, a battered envelope, in her hand. It was heavy enough to be two thousand and he hadn’t short-changed her yet. Good suppliers were hard to find, and Jack was one of the best. Having said that, if he could take the bone powder and get his money back …

‘I don’t need help to deal with one skinny little bitch.’ He pointed at the powder. ‘Give it to me.’

She tossed it to him and he caught it with a snap, holding it up against his face, and then opened the bag, careless of the rain, and sniffed deeply.

‘Long dead,’ he commented. ‘What is this, Roman shit?’

‘It’s good. A suicide.’

‘It’ll do.’ He sneered at her, now close enough to see in the soft grey light. ‘I heard you got yourself a girl. Blood to sell.’

‘You heard wrong.’ Her heart speeded up, as she tried to shrug it off.

‘Then I heard about this girl, dead on the London train, Monday night.’ He licked his lips. ‘I thinks to myself, that could be one of yours. Then I heard about the sigils, and I knew for sure.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Shit, where does he get his information from?

‘Oh, you do.’ He spun on one foot towards the road. ‘You need a girl, or that healer on Exmoor’s going to run out of her supplies. I’m not judging, Jack, doing the work of the angels, you two, healing them little kids.’ She saw his tongue slide out and lick his lips again in the dim light. ‘Thing is, I got a healer too. If you gets another girl, and I’m sure you will, then I can get you very good money. You hear what I’m saying.’

‘I’m just a dealer in occult ingredients, for whackos and weirdoes.’ She tucked the money away, drew out the knife, held it loosely in the folds of her coat. ‘Time’s up, Pierce. Now fuck off.’ A scrape of a shoe somewhere distracted her for a moment.

He bounded forward, arms swinging in her direction. She slid her hand onto the chalk marks she had drawn on the rough bricks behind her, and let the adrenaline charge her up. Maybe the rain helped conduct the energy through the knife, because at the lightest contact a blue discharge crackled between them. He fell, arched into a bow shape, his face distorted with the shock. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and for a moment, she thought she had killed him. After a long moment, he started to wheeze, chest heaving like an old set of bellows.

‘You … you …’ he managed, but Jack leapt over his twitching feet and into the street. She surprised two of Pierce’s minions, who loomed either side of the alleyway, by racing between them towards the sanctuary of her car.

With shouts and heavy footfalls echoing behind her, she turned into the next alley, pulling the bin into the middle of the shadow of the high walls, then ran to the car. She had left the driver’s door unlocked, keys in the ignition, and by the time she had started the engine the first bear was in the road, looking towards her. She snapped on the headlights – full beam – and watched as he staggered back, arms over his eyes. She hit the accelerator, steering around him as he spun in the road, and the car fishtailed on the wet tarmac. She accelerated down towards the town centre, and raced through red lights on the empty street. She glanced at the dashboard clock. Shit, ten-oh-five. It might already be too late.

Rain clattered on the roof of Jack’s car as she peered at street names. The seer had predicted the death would occur at around eleven. But seers’ prophecies were always a bit hazy. Their directions were worse –
along the river, by the spring, the crossroads south-east of the oak-topped hill …
The city centre was winding down. The directions had been based on an ancient geography, now smothered under a sheet of roads and houses in the eastern end of the city.

Nelson Road, Trafalgar Avenue, Oak Hill – that might be it. She could feel the muscles in her neck tighten as she thought of the teenager. Ten twenty-three. Maybe the girl was already dead. She slowed to a crawl, wiping a mist of condensation off the inside of the window, scanning both sides of the road.

A small figure under the bus stop bench might not have been obvious to someone walking by, but Jack’s headlights swept around and picked out a bundle of clothes. She drove the car onto the pavement and leapt out, the engine still growling. She dropped onto her knees and reached for the figure, cold water seeping into her jeans. She grabbed an arm, and dragged the teenager across the ground. The seer had said it would be a long shot.

‘Come on, kid, a little help would be good,’ she muttered. Jack pressed her finger to the girl’s throat, feeling a weak flicker of a pulse. Long shot or not, she couldn’t just leave her to die. Jack grabbed two good handfuls of the teenager and lifted her. She staggered under the awkward burden to the car, and managed to get a thumb onto the lock to open the boot. Jack half dropped, half rolled the body onto the dog blanket. The interior light revealed two short boots, slim ankles, pink tights and a leather band that could charitably be called a skirt. Her top half was wrapped in her coat, and as Jack uncovered her head she revealed vomit stuck to the white face and spiky black hair. She stank of cider.

‘Just hang on, OK?’ The girl moaned wordlessly in response. Thirty-three minutes to go. Jack slammed down the door of the boot and jumped into the battered estate. This was going to be
really
close.

Driving as fast as she dared, she fumbled for her phone and dialled Maggie’s number. Please be ready, please …

‘Hello? Jack?’ The soft voice on the other end of the line was sharpened with alarm.

‘I’ve got her! The girl, she’s still alive. Shit, Maggie, what are we doing?’

‘Saving a life. Just focus on that. I’ve got the room ready, just get back in time.’ She hung up and Jack dropped the mobile onto the passenger seat, praying the police didn’t notice her doing fifty in the city.

She powered through red lights, and was out of the town in eighteen minutes, down the main road to the turn off in another eight, into the village in six. She no longer had time to count, so she rattled over the cattle grid, and skidded into the yard behind the cottage. She had barely opened the boot before the girl started vomiting again, her lips going blue in the interior light. Jack wrestled her over one shoulder, and lurched towards the back door, held open by Maggie.

The older woman restrained the dog with both arms. ‘Quick, Jack!’

Jack staggered in and clipped the kid’s head on the door frame. That would be the least of her problems if she didn’t get her between the circles of sigils.

The girl stopped choking and fell against Jack’s back, her breath rattling. The concealed door in the panelling that led down to the priest hole was propped open with a pile of books. With the last seconds ticking away, Jack threw the girl down the stone steps into the sanctuary of the cellar.

The package was heavy, sealed with ‘C
ONFIDENTIAL
– P
OLICE
’ tape, and marked ‘FAO F
ELIX
G
UICHARD
ONLY’.

‘Professor? A police officer brought it in for you.’ The admin assistant was looking curious. ‘Rose had to sign for it.’

‘Thanks.’ He tucked the parcel under one arm, and kept his head down through the group of students, hoping none of them were in any of his classes. He’d only seen them a few times, and he never seemed to remember faces …

A girl stepped in front of him. ‘Professor Guichard?’

Damn
. ‘Um … yes? Alice, isn’t it?’

‘Alix. Hi. I was wondering if I could talk to you about the assignments this semester.’

He searched in his pocket for his office key, juggling the package, a briefcase full of papers and a laptop in a rucksack. The Georgian door had an original lock, with a key like a church door’s, and he fumbled it into the hole.

‘Sorry, I don’t have much time this morning. If you could come back after lunch …’

‘I have lectures this afternoon. Can I help?’ She leaned disturbingly close and smiled up at him. She was a leggy, auburn-haired girl, with a healthy tan. He shook off the momentary attraction and smiled.

‘Thank you, I’m fine. Or I will be – when I unlock this.’ The mechanism thumped internally and the door swung open.

‘Professor Guichard?’ His assistant Rose’s stern tone came from behind him. It got rid of the girl, who mumbled something about coming back later in the week.

‘To the rescue, as always.’

‘It’s just transference, you know,’ she said. ‘Indiana Jones has a lot to answer for.’

‘He’s archaeology, I’m anthropology,’ he said. ‘He’s also completely fictional.’

She took the parcel off him. ‘Well, she’s eighteen; she can’t help herself. Don’t encourage them, that’s all. You aren’t exactly unattractive, and you have that fatherly thing going on …’

Before he could form a cutting retort, he saw her standing by the desk, looking down at the bulky package. Her round, middle-aged face looked pensive.

‘That’s the post-mortem photographs from the police,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you would be able to help me with them.’

‘I thought so. Is this case going to cut into your time?’

Felix dropped his briefcase on the desk and slid the laptop onto his chair. ‘Maybe. How many departmental meetings are there this semester?’

She handed him the envelope. ‘You never go to them anyway. Is this to do with that poor girl on the train? I saw it on the evening news.’

He hesitated, feeling the weight of the package in his hand. He could feel a flutter of adrenaline just holding it. ‘She was covered with symbols, some of them Enochian letters.’

‘Well, let’s have a look at them. At least they didn’t make you attend the autopsy.’

‘They called me to the scene to view the body.’ He fumbled with the seal. He slid the pictures onto the desk, large glossy prints that catalogued every inch of the dead girl’s inscribed skin.

‘Good God.’ Rose picked up a picture showing the girl’s torso, with two concentric circles drawn over her hollow belly and flattened breasts. ‘That poor girl.’ She reached for another picture, peering at a symbol at the top of her chest. ‘These ones look Enochian. But these others, what are they?’

‘They look cuneiform, but unlike anything I’ve seen before. Is the layout familiar? I keep thinking I’ve seen something similar.’

Rose started laying out photographs on the desk, as Felix cleared piles of paperwork and academic journals onto his chair. There was a stack of ten-by-eights of both sides of the body. The circles on her back were smaller and were composed of less figures.

‘Do the letters spell anything?’ she asked, looking up at Felix with a frown.

He reached for a pen and started jotting on the back of a memo he hadn’t read and had even less chance of responding to. ‘T … G … C … E … is that an O?’ In between were other shapes, more elaborate.

She traced one, her finger almost touching the paper. ‘It’s so sad. She doesn’t look much older than my daughter.’

He glanced across at the pictures that included the dead face. Blonde hair, almost white, had fallen back away from her pale forehead. Her half-open eyes were shadowed with a soft grey. ‘I don’t know how old she was. Young.’

‘The shapes do look familiar.’ She stepped back, head cocked on one side.

Felix felt a surge of excitement as memory flickered in his mind, just out of reach. ‘That’s what I felt, at the station. Only, on something metal. Coin, maybe?’

She started. ‘A medal, perhaps? Do you remember … ?’

He crouched down and pulled open the bottom drawer of one of the filing cabinets. ‘There were two medals, the ones Dee was awarded by the king of Poland. I did an authentication for an auction house, around 2009, I think.’

‘I remember. There were some letters with them, and some notes. I photocopied them for you.’

He paused, looking at her round face. ‘We weren’t supposed to keep duplicates. They were bought up by an American museum, they probably have some sort of copyright.’

She shrugged. ‘The photocopies were in a big blue folder, if it helps. I just hope you kept them.’

He paused, smiled at her. ‘You know I keep everything you ever give me.’

She snorted with disbelief. ‘So you’ve got all those grant applications you’re supposed to keep for seven years?’

The back of the drawer was stuffed with outside consultation records. ‘Here we go. British Museum.’ He pulled the folder out and lifted it onto the edge of the desk. ‘Put those photographs away, for the moment, will you? Just leave the ones that show the whole circles.’

He rummaged through the folder, until he found the photocopies. The documents were mostly written in Dee’s precise hand. Many were household accounts and notes on vellum, but a smaller packet had been inscribed in a rough hand, on water-stained and pest-damaged paper. The medals, two large bronze discs, were the size of his palm, and she had copied each side. One had the face of King Istvan Báthory of Poland, the other had a curled dragon surrounded by two circles of inscribed shapes. There appeared to be a date, and he felt in his pocket for his glasses.