We Are Death (33 page)

‘You disappoint me,’ said Develin. ‘But then, I think we both knew which choice you would make.’

His voice tailed off, as though there was something left unsaid. She finally turned and looked at him, although his gaze remained resolutely forward.

‘I like you,’ he said after a while. ‘I thought I’d give you the chance. Shame.’

‘What now?’ she asked, although she was already looking away again by the time she said it.

She hadn’t intended to ask. Why give him the opportunity to talk, to explain things, to dominate her? She didn’t want to know anyway. She had given herself up, back into their hands, in the hope that it might help protect Haynes. Now it was up to them, and there was nothing she could do. Why think about it? Why even ask? She cursed herself for the question.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Develin. ‘I don’t like killing people I like.’

She swallowed, stopped herself looking at him.

‘We’ll see,’ he added. ‘As you can understand, the options are limited. It’s not as though we have a prison. Not anymore.’

*

T
here were nine of them in the room watching the images sent back by the drone. Another screen showed film being taken from the house across the road. On another screen, the plans of Geyerson’s house. In another room of the station, the owner of the house, who had been found, collected, spoken to and brought in, waited to fill them in on any details they might have missed from the rest of their surveillance.

Haynes felt like he was on the set of a film. So different from any police control room he’d been in at home. Everything looked new, everything seemed to work. No one was shouting. Often enough, he thought, people were happy to say how terrible things are in Britain, how small, how underfunded, how obsolete. Haynes was, for the first time, seeing evidence of it.

The operation was running smoothly with no one seemingly in charge. Markussen was directing the local police, while deferring to Jericho and Badstuber. A collaborative effort. That was something else Haynes didn’t recognise. He couldn’t imagine Dylan, or anyone else – even Jericho – letting a foreign officer onto their patch and listening to their suggestions, never mind taking orders from them.

‘They’re going to know there’s a drone above the house?’ asked Jericho.

Markussen shook his head.

‘Nah, it’s high enough. They won’t be able to hear shit.’

‘I thought all those villagers in Pakistan could hear drones above them for days before they finally let fire?’

Markussen smiled, amused by the question.

‘Dude,’ he said, ‘those things are huge. They have, like, missiles on them. Ours has a camera. It’s much smaller, and also much lower to the ground, which is why you get such a great view.’

‘They’re still going to see it, surely,’ said Haynes, feeling the need to back up the boss, irritated by Markussen.

‘Maybe if they spend their time looking straight up in the air. A quick glance and they’ll just think they’re looking at a bird, some shit like that.’

Markussen looked like he was the only one convinced by this, so he smiled again. ‘Look, if no one turns up and your man moves back to the hotel, then I’ll give you this one, OK?’

For the first time since they’d been watching, a car pulled up at the gate. Black Audi, darkened windows. The room went quiet as they all watched, waiting to see how it would play out.

Not unexpectedly, the gate opened with neither driver nor guard emerging, and the car moved slowly up the driveway. It parked in front of the house, a moment, the driver’s door opened, she walked around the car, opened the nearside rear passenger door and a man stepped out. Asian, dark grey suit. He paused, looked around, the camera across the road got a perfect shot of him, and then he entered the house without ringing the bell or knocking.

The diver returned to the car, then it moved off slowly to a road at the side, around to the rear of the property. They all looked at the drone feed to see the car parking behind the house. The driver got out and walked into the house through a back door. Again she didn’t knock.

‘We can check for that guy?’ asked Jericho.

An officer leaning over a screen at the side of the room said, ‘Already on it, give me five.’

The team’s attention returned to the front on camera, waiting for someone else to arrive at the gate.

‘We come to it,’ said Jericho. ‘The players have started to arrive.’

‘Maybe he’ll be the only player,’ said Markussen.

‘That’s possible,’ said Jericho, ‘but that’s a damn big house he’s rented to pick up just one person.’

‘Totally.’

‘We should start getting our plans finalised, and be ready to go. Let’s have a quick chat with the owner.’

Jericho paused, looked around the room.

‘Sorry, we shouldn’t be too heavy-handed. The guy’s doing us a favour. Just me and Markussen.’

Haynes nodded, but the apology wasn’t really directed at him.

‘Of course,’ said Badstuber.

Jericho, not for the first time, let his eyes linger upon her for a moment or two longer than necessary.

––––––––

‘W
ould things have been different if I’d spoken to you two months ago? Two weeks ago?’

Darkness was finally beginning to arrive. The lights of the city were on, cars cutting bright columns of traffic on the streets below. There were still boats out on the fjord, the last of the daylight being smothered by the low cloud that had hung over the city all day.

The whole thing felt utterly surreal. Everything that had happened since Sergeant Haynes had come to her office the previous week had felt faintly ridiculous. She had walked into her own adventure story, with overseas travel, romance, murder, a secret society and evil men in suits.

And now she was standing at the window of a room in a luxury hotel, a gin and tonic in her hand, drinking with the Devil.

‘You don’t know,’ he said, answering the question for her. ‘That’s reasonable.’

‘Tell me what’s going to happen.’ she said. ‘And tell me again why I can’t just smash this glass, stab you in the neck, and walk out of here.’

Did her own inaction make her complicit? Would the true heroine of this story have made more of an effort to escape? All along she had accepted the quietly spoken threats, the notion that her captor was all-powerful and that resistance was utterly useless.

‘This is our hotel,’ he said. ‘We own it. We own the staff. If someone saw you walking alone through the hotel, they’d stop you.’

‘Every member of staff is a guard? Even the cleaners and the, I don’t know, bellboy, or whatever they’re called these days?’

He caught her eye in the window, looking slightly surprised at the question.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

He made a nonchalant movement with his own glass.

‘We have one in every capital.’

He smiled, and suddenly she realised that he was attracted to her. No longer caught up in foolishness, it was obvious that he really did like her. The fact that she was still alive wasn’t just because they thought she’d be a useful person to have in their organisation.

She held his gaze for a moment, then lowered her eyes. Put her lips to the glass, took a slow drink. Swallowed. Looked back out at the fast-approaching Oslo evening.

How to play this new realisation was as much out of her territory as everything else from the past week, but she was a woman and he was a man, and it couldn’t be that difficult.

‘So, I’m curious about one thing,’ she said. ‘You haven’t done much to tempt me, apart from kidnap me, twice, which isn’t really the best way to attract a girl. Tell me what’s happening tonight, at least. Tell me why we’re in Oslo.’

Develin smiled, nodding to himself, as if acknowledging that they were playing the game. He didn’t usually talk, but he’d already been thinking about it. Telling her the story might be the only way to reel her in. And there was no doubt that he wanted to reel her in. He’d even managed to persuade his bosses that it was to their benefit. Not that it wouldn’t be to their benefit, but it certainly wasn’t his primary concern.

His agenda was set for the evening in any case, but he might as well make one last attempt at getting her to join up. That way he could take his time with her, rather than following through on his current plan, which was to rape her and kill her.

The thought of it, of lying with her naked, of sliding inside her, of biting and sucking her breasts, had been with him all day. He’d been nice to her, he’d given her the chance, and she’d shown her true colours. Shame about what was going to have to happen.

‘You spoke to Commander Drummond. You got him to translate the book you stole from our library in Paris.’

‘We brought the book back.’

‘You photographed its pages, Professor, we’re not stupid. So you made that connection, and Drummond told you the gist of the story. The incredible tale of the Honourable Featherstone. Well, apart from the fact that the old fool really needs to learn to keep his mouth shut, it’s all true.’

He took another drink; the ice clinked in the glass. He caught her eye and smiled. He recognised that she really didn’t see through him. She might not think it a game, but she didn’t think he was capable of doing what he was. Just a mild-mannered guy in a suit who gave orders.

‘There had long been a myth of the lost valley in the mountain of Kangchenjunga. The fact that people disappeared there, and that others emerged years after having been lost, not a day older. Featherstone found his way there. We don’t know if he went looking for it, or whether he stumbled across it by accident. He stayed, then thirty years later he left. Unlike others, however, he didn’t leave empty-handed. He took with him the Book. The Book of Lazarus.’

Leighton couldn’t help smiling. And then, perhaps, she even let the gin speak.

‘That’s bullshit,’ she said, then smiled curiously at herself. ‘Really, that’s not true. There is no book of Lazarus.’

‘Why do you say that? It was two thousand years ago. How can anyone know exactly how many books there were written about Jesus, or who wrote them? And do you think if there was such a book, a book that outlined the powers of Jesus Christ, that detailed in some way the alchemy and the magic behind his miracles, that the Synod of Hippo would’ve included it in the Bible?
Hey, why don’t we let everyone know how he did it!
’

‘But that... but no one actually thinks he did it! No one thinks the stories of the miracles are true.’

Develin shrugged.

‘Well, some do, but yes, you’re right. Magic, supernatural powers, whatever you want to call them, everyone is sceptical. There are plenty of people in my organisation who are sceptical. I’m sceptical. But there’s a book, and Featherstone found it, and he brought it back to England and there was little doubt, from contemporary records, that he hadn’t aged a day. Maybe he just drank the water and ate some sort of herb.’

‘So Featherstone stole the book.’

Develin nodded.

‘That’s more or less how it went. He stole the book. The story of Featherstone isn’t a great one. That’s one of the reasons – one of them – why it isn’t told. It’s like all the stories, all the tales of greatness. The great empires. Every one of them was built on conquest or on the exploitation of people. Nobody wants to dwell on that part.’

Another movement of the glass, another drink, Develin was relaxing into his subject. Or pretending to relax, hoping perhaps to draw Leighton further in. Leighton took another drink, happy to let him talk.

Was she, at some point, going to test his claim? Could she break her glass and put it to his throat, then see if she could just walk out of the building?

‘Perhaps it was just something in his time in the Himalayas that allowed him to draw something from within, that allowed him to become a great man, doing great things. Perhaps it was indeed the book. We don’t know.’

‘He beat his wife and then stole an ancient artefact,’ said Leighton. ‘He doesn’t sound so great.’

‘Whatever he was, and remember that most great men and women are awash with contradiction, he built an immensely powerful organisation. They controlled things, they controlled people, they controlled governments.’

He finished off his drink, the ice falling against his lips, then lowered the glass.

‘And we still do,’ he added. ‘Would you like another drink?’

‘Please,’ she said, nodding.

She drained her glass and handed it to him. Their fingers touched in the exchange. He felt the excitement of it, and hoped she did too. She watched him as he moved to the drinks cabinet, as she had done previously, making sure he didn’t slip anything into her glass. Of course, she was no drinker. She might have been taking alcohol to steal her nerve, but it was going to be a very narrow line between that and her usual affected, useless, good-natured intoxication.

She didn’t really want to feel any good nature towards Develin.

‘And this book was placed at the summit of Kangchenjunga?’

Develin nodded, over the sound of gin pouring into two fresh glasses.

‘The organisation grew quickly in the beginning, and perhaps you’re right. The measure of Featherstone was that it quickly outgrew him. Its power was established, but the book considered too dangerous. And so it was placed as far out of the way as possible. They took it back to the Himalayas, but instead of returning it to the lost valley, they took it to the summit of the highest mountain on earth. Or, as the history books will tell you, what was believed to be the highest mountain on earth at the time. Kangchenjunga.’

‘That
is
a good story,’ she said.

He smiled, walked back to her, handed over her drink and slightly raised his glass, before taking his first sip of the fresh, colder liquid. What was it? His fourth of the day? He probably ought to slow down. Stop, in fact.

‘Everything you read nowadays about Kangchenjunga stems from that moment. The fact that the locals hold the mountain holy and that no one should go to the summit, that was us. The locals are well compensated to go along with it. Climbers were supposed to not go to the summit. And the organisation made the decision to leave the book there, although we’ve had pretty strong surveillance on it for the last fifty years.’