The Orpheus Trail (21 page)

Maybe I was just tired. I should go home and get a good night’s sleep and start again in the morning. Turning back towards the museum I glanced behind to see if anyone turned after me. I would call and tell Lisa I was going home. Driving back up Victoria Road I caught myself constantly glancing in the rear-view and wing mirrors to see if I could spot anyone following me and even when I turned into my own drive I was still looking over my shoulder so that I only just braked hard in time to stop the car slamming into the garage door. When a silver saloon seemed to almost meander past the gate a wave of sick
terror went through me, and for a few moments I went on sitting in the driving seat not trusting myself to get out.

It was a relief to find Caesar curled up on my bed. I scratched his head between his pricked ears and he put out a black paw with spread claws to dab playfully at my hand when I drew it away. Downstairs as I switched on the radio and poured myself a drink, he stalked into the kitchen and crossed over to the still bolted cat flap to scratch at it expectantly. ‘Sorry boy, you can’t get out, not for a while yet.’

We were both prisoners, banged up together, and who could say for how long, unless and until Hildreth and his boys could make some arrests and put an end to our imprisonment. Caesar looked back at me and mouthed, ‘Out’. All I could do was put down a dish of his favourite pellets, rattling it seductively to try to entice him away from the lure of the great outdoors. Next morning, after cleaning out the cat tray that he had finally been forced to use in desperation (though
thoughtfully
with an easily removed, neat chipolata of crap) I set out for work feeling as if something of the bright summer morning might yet rub off on me. If Hildreth left me alone.

Trying not to let my mind wander over what he might be doing, whether they had anything else on Stalbridge’s computer, who had killed Jack and all the other unanswered questions, I set about the annual report again, never a job calculated to engross me even with nothing else on my mind. Eventually the routine of work, of everyday, took over so that everything that had happened began to seem like a receding nightmare I might at last emerge from. At lunchtime I ate my sandwiches on the beach with a stretch of ribbed sand in front of me smelling of stranded seaweed in rubbery heaps glinting in the sun, and far out a silver bowstring of water drawn across the horizon.

The afternoon was spent with Lisa, overseeing the mailing of the exhibition posters to sites all over town, and finally posting them up on our own noticeboards outside and inside the building. So when I heard Hildreth’s unmistakable voice coming out of the end of the handset and into my unwilling ear, I had to fight hard to resist a strong impulse just to put it back in its cradle and pretend I wasn’t there.

‘Ah, Alex, I thought I’d pay you a little visit tomorrow. There are
some things I want to check on in Bradwell and I thought I’d drop in on the way. I’ve got something for you. I suppose you wouldn’t like to come with me?’

‘I’m up to my ears at the moment.’

‘Well another time. I should be passing your door about eleven. Would that suit?’

‘I’ll be in my office.’

‘See you then.’

Was it just a romantic fallacy or had the day really clouded over? On my way out I took comfort in our shiny new posters. The chairman at least should be pleased with their bright colours and laughing faces, showing off some of the pier head entertainments. Then I
remembered
Hildreth’s threatened visit. Why was he really coming and what was this mysterious ‘something’ he had for me? Perhaps it was just an excuse to check on me, that I was where I said I was.

Caesar was waiting when I got home, demanding to know why he couldn’t go out and reclaim his old territory. His wounds had quickly healed and his coat had got back its shine. Like any other recoveree he couldn’t see why he wasn’t allowed to get back to his old routine.

‘You might not be so lucky next time,’ I said sternly. ‘Now they know how clever you are, they might not let you go.’

I considered whether I should send him away for a bit to the safety of his usual cat’s hotel but the thought of my empty house without the comfort of a living, warm-blooded presence I could at least
communicate
with, made me reject the idea, even though I knew it might be selfish to do so, and putting him in danger again. I even wondered briefly if I should take him to the museum with me every day. Then I imagined the chairman walking into my office. I rang Hilary.

‘Hildreth’s threatening to pay me a visit tomorrow. He says he’s got something for me.’

‘Does that mean they’re making some progress at last, that he’s actually got something to tell you?’

‘I think it’s a more tangible something but I can’t imagine what it could be. I’ll let you know. Will you be around?’

‘Yes, yes I will. Beth’s back in Cambridge so I’m on my own again.’

‘Hildreth didn’t say that they were making progress. It seems like
a complete stalemate.’ I heard the laughter in her voice and made no effort to keep it out of mine.

Suppose the whole thing went cold and there were never any obvious answers, we would never feel safe again. I could imagine being lulled into a false sense of security only to be snapped awake by some unexpected happening, like a nearby gunshot, even if it turned out to be just an exhaust backfiring.

I slept badly, haunted by confused and whirling dreams of trying to find something or someone, I didn’t know which or where, so that when Phoebe showed Hildreth into my office at ten minutes to eleven the next morning, I was in a decidedly uncooperative mood, wanting him away on his travels as soon as I could get rid of him but, as usual, he was affable and unruffled by my refusal to respond, making me feel like a tetchy, over-tired child in danger of a serious tantrum.

‘Exhibition keeping you busy, Alex, I imagine. I saw the posters as I came in. I see you’ve got the Laughing Policeman up there with Aunt Sally. Must be a lot of work to organise a thing like that.’

‘My chief assistant did most of it while I was in Amsterdam.’

‘Delegation, that’s the thing. We have to do a lot of it in my
profession
. Now that technology, forensics and all that, are all-important poor old PC Plod is out of his depth. I blame Sherlock Holmes. He was a bit of a technocrat for his time, wouldn’t you say?’

I refused to be soothed. ‘You said you had something for me – Dr Caistor and I were wondering if you were making any progress. It’s hard to get on with life when you’re looking over your shoulder all the time.’

‘You feel you’re personally in some kind of danger do you, Alex? Has anything happened that has made you feel that?’

‘It’s just that everything is so unresolved. I’m sure Jack was
murdered
by whoever was putting the squeeze on Stalbridge but we still don’t know anything concrete, do we?’

‘You mean the police don’t. The trouble is, Alex, I can’t discuss what we’re doing with the lay public, even someone as closely involved as you. I can only say we’re working on it, and if you come across
anything
, however trivial it may seem, you get in touch. Sometimes it’s the little things that tell us most. That hasn’t changed since Holmes, even
though he was a fiction. He used all the tools available to him, and his imagination, powers of reconstruction, that sort of thing, because criminals themselves are very imaginative as I always tell recruits when I’m asked to lecture at Hendon. And nowadays of course they’ve got the internet, the virtual world. Don’t underestimate them, I tell the students. It’s a battle of wits.’

I wanted to say, ‘I don’t need the lecture,’ but managed to keep the words back. Instead I asked, ‘So what have you got for me?’

‘Ah yes. I nearly forgot.’ Hildreth pressed the catch on the
briefcase
he was carrying, opened the leather flap and took out a small, soft cloth, drawstring bag. Pulling apart the puckered mouth he emptied the contents into his large open palm where they lay in a glistening heap. ‘We’ve done with these so I think as they’re technically yours you’re entitled to have them back.’

I stared at the small golden squares with their engraved lettering resting in the cup of his hand. I knew I must make some suitable response but they seemed to glint with a malevolent eye as the light caught the metal surface, so that I couldn’t put out my hand to take them from him. He slid them deftly back into the pouch and held it out to me. ‘Oh, and there’s this.’ He took out a small black notebook. ‘We found it among Stalbridge’s things. My boys have gone over it but they can’t make anything of it except the physical forensics, prints, DNA traces, that sort of thing. I’d like you to have a look at it and see if you can come up with anything.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’d better put them all in the safe,’ and found I was able to reach out and take the little bag and the notebook from him. ‘Do you need a receipt?’

‘Any time. Next time we meet will do. I’d better be off. Don’t bother to see me out. We’ll keep in touch. Anyway I’ll see you at the opening. I take it I’m invited. Let me know if you have any eureka thoughts.’

My legs were shaking. I sat down and stared at the small sand-
coloured
pouch, lying on the desk in front of me where I had dropped it as soon as Hildreth had left. If he’d wanted to watch my reaction to seeing the plates again I had given him a fine display of terror that could easily be judged guilt. It was almost as if he was in league with the enemy and had been delivering their warning. But he was the one
who involved me, who dragged me along. He hadn’t told me why he was going back to Bradwell, what he hoped to find there. In fact when I came to think it over, he told me nothing while seeming to take me into his confidence. And now I understood the power of fear, to
dissolve
all certainties, call everything and everyone into question, to shake the foundations of one’s own mind, of the state, the world, the universe. That was why governments used it as Orwell had seen. Our responses are those of any animal: fight or flight, or if we can’t manage either, that of the rabbit frozen in the headlights with death bearing down. And it seemed that I was just the petrified rabbit.

It was fear itself, the fear of being shamed if anyone, Lisa or Phoebe, or even the chairman dropping in, should find me in this almost
catatonic
state that finally made me lift my head, open the desk drawer, take out the tin cash box where the safe key was kept, and open the safe door. The companion to the gold squares, the round disk or coin that Hilary and I had found in the amulet with them, looked back at me. I put the little bag on top of it, unwilling or unable to open the drawstring and put the coin inside, the notebook on top, and closed and set the lock on the door, more as if to contain any malign
influence
within than to keep out intruders.

‘I’m going out for a sandwich,’ I said, putting my head briefly round Lisa’s half-open door. The Laughing Policeman and Aunt Sally grinned at me as I passed. 

From a lost chronicle of Abbot Albinus of Canterbury. Transcribed by Nothelm, a priest of London
AD
721

580: In this year the Blessed Gregory, not then risen to the papacy, passing through the market at Rome paused to buy from some traders newly come to the city and among the wares exposed for sale were some boys of fair complexion, fine features and bright hair. Upon his enquiring of the merchants who they were and what land they came from and whether they were Christians, he was told that they were Angles from Deira and pagan. ‘Non angli sed angeli’, that is in English; ‘not Angles but angels,’ and further: ‘they shall be saved from De Ire, that is the wrath of God.’

597: In this year the Blessed Gregory sent Augustine to this island to begin the
conversion
of the English according to his promise when he was papal representative to the city of Rome and first saw the Anglian boys in the market place. Augustine, after many hesitations, for the prospect of coming to a barbarian country put him and his forty monks at first in great fear, landed in the island of Thanet in the kingdom of Aethelbert, King of Kent who had a Christian wife from Gaul, Bertha by name.

601: In this year at Augustine’s request, Pope Gregory sent more workers to Britain and among the most to be remembered were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus and Rufinianus. And Mellitus was made Bishop of London, Augustine himself having established his see at Canterbury. Paulinus was consecrated Bishop of York and Justus of Rochester. Altogether twelve bishops were made all from Rome sent here for our salvation: since not only did we not know the Lord but we were unlettered in Greek and Latin and even in our own language, for we would not learn from the Welsh whose armies we fought constantly for the land we had taken, as God willed it, nor did they make haste to teach us. When these learned men first came among us they brought interpreters from Gaul so that they could speak to us and we to them until they learned our tongue and we began to know both to read and write in Latin.

The Holy Father Gregory in Rome, did not abandon us as the Roman legions had Britain but was continually in correspondence with Augustine and the others while he lived, following the example of the Apostle Paul.