The Greenwich monastery that Ciaran had referred to was much nearer to the Tower of London than Isarel had been expecting.
‘In the shadow of old Henry the Eighth’s butchery,’ observed Ciaran, spreading out the A to Z to direct Isarel through the night streets. ‘You can almost see Traitors’ Gate from Father Abbot’s study, I believe.’
To their left was the muted hum of London’s never-still night traffic, but to the right was the unmistakable lapping of the Thames, muffled and subtle. Isarel had the sudden feeling that he was straddling two worlds: one the rushing importantly busy twentieth century, and the other a long-ago world where people had different fears and different stresses. Where you did not have to worry about nuclear wars and Third World starvation, or unemployment and inflation, but where, if you were caught practising the wrong religion at the wrong time, you could lose your head and your entrails in a grisly form of legalised murder. Were terrorist bombs preferable to being hanged, drawn and quartered? Isarel frowned and shook his head to clear the nightmare images. Perhaps it was the closeness of the Thames that was making him feel like this. Hadn’t Tudor London – Henry VIII’s London – used the Thames in the way people today used the M25? I wonder if it got as congested, he thought. Tudor rush hour. Tailbacks of barges for five miles.
The river had seen centuries of history and some of it had been very dark and very bloody history indeed. All those people who had been rowed by night to the Tower, and flung into some wretched, windowless dungeon to die of cold and hunger. A riverboat carrying prisoners intended for St Thomas’s Tower shed its load earlier today, and passengers are advised to use alternative routes because the floating corpses are blocking two lanes . . .
He scowled and with a vague association of ideas, but also with the intention of bringing himself back into the present, reached for the switch of the car’s radio.
‘Do you mind, Ciaran? Just to keep me awake for the last stretch?’ Just to keep me in the twentieth century, said his mind.
‘Yes, sure.’
It was just after midnight, and as Isarel swung the car in the direction of Greenwich Observatory, the midnight news headlines were ending. The Economy, somebody’s speech in the House of Commons, a plane crash somewhere . . .
And then the announcer said, ‘The Metropolitan Police reported earlier that there is still no news of Kate Kendal who vanished from her North London home yesterday and that they have not ruled out the possibility of kidnapping. Kate Kendal has a music promotions agency in Central London, and is married to the anthropologist, Dr Richard Kendal, who published several books on his subject, before a severe injury three years ago forced him to live in semi-retirement.’
Isarel jerked the car to the side of the road and switched off the ignition. He and Ciaran sat in stunned silence, staring at the radio.
And then Isarel said, ‘Ahasuerus. He’s got Kate. It must be that; it’s too much of a coincidence to be anything else.’ He glanced at Ciaran, silent and still at his side. ‘If Kate took Ahasuerus to her house,’ said Isarel, ‘which is a reasonable assumption, and if Ahasuerus broke out, God alone knows what might have happened. They mention a husband – did we know she had a husband?’
‘No, but it doesn’t matter.’ Ciaran’s eyes were shadowed, but after a moment he said, ‘I think you’re right about Ahasuerus being involved. But I can’t begin to think where he’d have taken Kate—’
‘Or more to the point, why.’
‘No, but we’ve got to find out.’ He broke off, and Isarel said,
‘You know, it’s probably wholly illogical, but I haven’t been seeing Ahasuerus as a killer.’
‘According to the legends, he never was.’
‘But you’re no longer sure about it.’
‘No. I believe he was appallingly mutilated by Henry the Eighth’s men and it’s possible that because of it he’s no longer entirely sane—’ He made an angry gesture. ‘I hear what I’m saying, but I hardly believe I’m saying it. I’m talking as if he’s an ordinary sentient being—’
‘We’re both doing that.’
‘Yes. But God help me, Isarel,’ said Ciaran, his voice filled with angry bitterness, ‘I don’t know what we do next. I don’t even know where we start. I’ve been out of the world for too long. Twelve years of the cloister—I can’t cope with practicalities any more—’ He hit the dashboard angrily. ‘Sod being in Curran Glen, it’s equipped me for fuck-all—’
He broke off, and Isarel thought: it’s not so much to do with the monastery as the girl – Kate. She’s stirred up something in you that you thought you had under control, only I don’t think you ever did have it under control, not properly. And I think you’re in the wrong job, my friend.
After a moment, he said, ‘When you let down the barriers you do it with a vengeance.’ And without giving Ciaran time to reply, ‘One thing at a time. First off, we’ll find Kate’s address.’
‘That ought to be easy enough.’ Ciaran’s tone was non-committal.
‘And after that,’ said Isarel, starting up the car again, ‘we’ll try to talk to people who knew her. We might get a lead there. Neighbours, or her business associates. His business associates, even.’
‘Won’t the police have done all that?’
Isarel said thoughtfully, ‘They might. But I’d guess they aren’t treating it too seriously yet. Unless there was any evidence of violence or force – or something unmistakable like a ransom note – they’re probably being pretty perfunctory about it. “Your wife’s vanished, has she, sir? Dear me, very worrying for you, but these things happen.” The police are probably making mental reservations about lovers – yes, and remembering that this is a lady with a husband who’s disabled in some way.’
‘The radio said a severe injury that forced him into semi-retirement—’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Isarel, ‘that the only reason Kate’s disappearance got into that news bulletin at all was because of her husband’s tragedy, whatever it was. It’s exactly the kind of thing today’s press would pounce on. Journalists are ghouls and cannibals, although I’ll admit there was probably some news value in Kendal’s reputation. It sounded as if he was quite well known in his own circles. I wonder what happened to him three years ago? That might be another line of enquiry we could pursue.’
‘I wonder,’ said Ciaran, ‘if it was anything to do with the music.’
‘Now that I hadn’t thought of.’ Isarel put the car in gear and let out the clutch. ‘Did you mean that about Curran Glen, by the way?’
‘I’ve no idea. I think we turn left along there for Greenwich.’
The guest master welcomed them at the Greenwich Monastery, waved aside any suggestion that their extremely late arrival might have caused inconvenience, hunted out a telephone directory at Isarel’s request, and padded off to make them a pot of tea.
Isarel drank the hot tea gratefully, and turned the pages of the directory.
‘You’ve found her?’
‘Yes. There’s no private number, but there’s a business one in Central London.’ He passed the phone book over.
‘Kate Kendal & Associates,’ said Ciaran, reading the entry. ‘And an address in Old Compton Street. “Music Promotions: publicity for all Orchestral and Sinfonia Concerts. National Trust Concerts arranged. Specialists in late baroque and chamber music.”’
Ciaran looked across at Isarel, who said softly, ‘I’m on home ground with the lady.’ He set down his teacup and stood up, stretching to ease the stiffness of the long drive. ‘It’s one o’clock in the morning,’ he said. ‘Lead me to the cells before I fall asleep at this table. If there’s a hair shirt laid out on my bed I shall tear it up and throw it out of the window.
‘But in the morning we’ll phone Kate Kendal’s office.’
Kendal & Associates were housed in one of the old redbrick buildings near the Charing Cross Road end of Old Compton Street.
‘Bang in the centre of Soho,’ said Isarel, sending Ciaran a malicious grin. ‘You’re falling among the thieves and robbers and the whores with a vengeance now, Brother Ciaran.’
‘Christ rubbed shoulders with them all,’ observed Ciaran.
‘Well, so long as you don’t start overturning the Money Lenders’ Tables in the Temple.’
A bistro took up the entire ground floor of the building, and there were three or four floors above.
‘And police and paparazzi everywhere,’ said Isarel, surveying the crowds disgustedly. ‘No wonder the bistro was suggested as the meeting place. Didn’t I say that reporters were vultures? Let’s go straight in, shall we? Those two females in black leather look as if they’re staking us out.’
‘What did he sound like?’ asked Ciaran as they found a corner table of the smoky, garlic-scented bistro. ‘The partner?’
‘She. American. Energetic. And a kind of brusque efficiency mixed with unconventionality. She asked for a couple of phone numbers so that she could check our credentials beforehand.’
‘What did you give her?’
‘The Greenwich Monastery and Curran Glen Abbey,’ said Isarel. ‘What did you expect me to give her? The nearest hell fire club or a strip joint? Pass the wine list, for heaven’s sake. I’ll need at least half a bottle if I’ve got to cope with American dynamism.’
‘Greenwich and Curran Glen will undoubtedly vouch for us,’ said Ciaran. He sounded abstracted and Isarel looked up from the wine list.
‘What’s the matter?’ He met Ciaran’s eyes, and comprehension dawned. ‘God, yes of course, it’s all this, isn’t it? You’re out in the world again – I mean really out. As you said last night, twelve years in a monastery didn’t equip you for—’
‘—you’re bowdlerising what I actually said—’
‘—didn’t equip you for any of this,’ said Isarel, ignoring the interruption. ‘The journey here – motorways, the ferry – they didn’t make much impact, because they were transitional things, and Greenwich Monastery’s like an extension of Curran Glen. But this is different. Not just this bistro, but London, Soho, everything. People and shops and the tube and the rush hour. This is the real world again, and you’ve been rocketed back into it, and it’s happened so abruptly that it must feel like a – a series of violent blows.’ He looked at the crowded restaurant. In one corner, three men in their twenties wearing sharply-tailored suits discussed finance and answered mobile phones that rang intrusively. At another table, some kind of interview was clearly being given, and the table was strewn with a notebook and pens and a small portable recorder. Elsewhere people swapped office scandal or rehearsed sales presentations, or post-mortemed meetings.
Ciaran said quietly, ‘I’d forgotten how loud the world was.’ He gestured briefly about him. ‘At first sight you’d think they were doing it to impress. Talking loudly, answering those mobile phones to show everyone how busy and important they are. It’s hype – have I the right word?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘But they don’t know they’re doing it, do they? Even if they did it for effect at the beginning, they aren’t now. They’re like rats going round and round on a treadmill, but they’re no longer aware of the treadmill.’ His eyes went from one table to another. ‘I thought I’d put it all behind me,’ he said, half to himself. ‘All that worldly allure. All those temptations.’
‘But,’ said Isarel softly, ‘they’re still there? The temptations?’
‘Yes, they’re still there.’ Ciaran’s eyes flickered over the crowded bistro, and then he made an impatient gesture and said in a much sharper voice, ‘Well, one thing I do remember about temptation is that the only thing to do with it is yield to it. Have we a decent Hock on the wine list?’
Lauren Mayhew sat opposite to them and ate poached trout and salad niçoise with the brisk attention of one intent on nothing other than re-fuelling. She was a small, energetic lady of about thirty-five, with short fair hair cut in a glossy cap, and huge tinted spectacles which emphasised very striking blue eyes. The American accent was not as marked as it had been on the phone.
She talked in short, sharp bursts between mouthfuls, punctuating her story about Kate Kendal with frequent draughts of the sharp frosty Traminer which Isarel had ordered, and which she drank as if it was tap water.
‘That’s pretty much all I know about this crazy business,’ she said, laying down her knife and fork and reaching for cigarettes. ‘And it’s not a whole lot more than you know. Do you mind if I smoke? Kate hated it in the office, but it helps me to think.’ She arranged her cigarette packet squarely in line with the lighter. ‘Kate was meeting the guy from the Hampstead Concert for lunch on the day she disappeared: and then Richard and Moira saw him break into the house and take the thing out of the coffin later the same day – around five.’
Ciaran leaned forward abruptly. ‘You did say Moira Mahoney?’ he said, and Isarel glanced at him.
‘Yes. I guess you’d know her, of course. Kate picked her up in Curran Glen, or maybe she picked Kate up, I’m not sure which. I don’t know too much about her yet.’
‘Red hair and huge smoky eyes?’
‘And a complexion I’d give my virtue to have,’ agreed Lauren. ‘Oh, and some kind of slightly damaged foot or twisted leg or something, although it’s the last thing you notice about her.’ She reached for her wine glass again. ‘It’s my bet she’s run away from a man,’ she said, shrewdly.
‘Why?’
‘With those eyes and that hair there’d be bound to be a man around somewhere.’
Ciaran said, ‘There was, but not in the way you think.’ And then, with a sudden pleased grin, ‘So she finally got away, did she? Good for Moira.’ He looked back at Lauren. ‘She’s at Kate’s house now?’
‘She sure is. She and Richard chased Conrad Vogel half across London, but they lost him in the end.’ She sipped her wine. ‘We didn’t tell the police any of that part – the chase and Ahasuerus – they were sceptical enough as it was – and we figured that if we started to hold forth about undead creatures from beyond the grave we’d get even less co-operation. They were polite but—’
‘Perfunctory?’
‘Perfunctory will do. Their trouble is they haven’t enough evidence to promote a large-scale search; our trouble was that the only evidence we’d got was so unbelievable we didn’t dare disclose it. But the appointment with Vogel was written in Kate’s diary, and she didn’t return from it. We’re sure that Vogel’s got her but we can’t prove he has.’
‘What about his office?’ said Ciaran. ‘Or his home?’
‘Both closed up with answerphones to take messages.’
‘What did Kate think was behind this Serse set-up?’ asked Isarel.
‘I don’t think she knew, not properly. But she knew the coffin-creature was connected with it, and she was going to try to use him to expose the whole thing. She was pretty pleased at having got him out of your monastery,’ said Lauren, grinning at Ciaran. ‘And I remember that she laughed about locking the coffin in the cellar with him inside it. She said it felt as if she’d got on to the set of a schlock horror film and that if Moira hadn’t been there to help, she’d have lost her nerve.’ Lauren paused, and then said, ‘She didn’t know you two were following her, though, I’m pretty sure about that.’
‘We weren’t very efficient,’ said Ciaran. ‘We lost her crossing the Irish Sea.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Ms Mayhew promptly. ‘I’ve lost all kinds of things crossing the Irish Sea. It’s turbulent and very feisty.’ She sent Ciaran an appraising look. ‘But I’m rather partial to turbulent feisty Irishness. Should I call you Brother or Father, or what?’
‘Just Ciaran.’
‘Well then, tell me, Ciaran, do you take part in all those high-gloss Catholic ceremonies? High Mass and Evensong and so on?’
‘I do.’
‘Plainchant? What about plainchant? Do you sing that?’
‘Certainly,’ said Ciaran. ‘But I’m a very indifferent performer.’
Lauren Mayhew blew a plume of smoke into the air and looked straight at him. ‘I should think you perform rather well,’ she said coolly.
There was a silence. Isarel thought: well, he asked for that one. How will he field it, I wonder?
But Ciaran showed not the least trace of embarrassment. At his most Irish, he said, ‘Ah, it’s a long time since I was at concert pitch, Ms Mayhew,’ and infused his tone with such a note of regret that Lauren laughed.
‘I guess I asked for that,’ she said. ‘Would you take it as a double entendre if I said, Sorry and I hope there are no hard feelings?’
‘Oh, that’d be an insult,’ said Ciaran, at once.
Lauren blinked, and then leaned forward. ‘Listen, Ciaran, you’re an ascetic fighting to quench the man of the world, right? Well, if the ascetic ever loses the fight, remember I’m in the phone book.’ She looked back at Isarel speculatively and said, ‘That goes for you as well. You never know, you might get bored with Irish solitude in Jude Weissman’s haunted house.’
There was a brief pause. Isarel looked at her. ‘So you know who I am, do you?’
‘Sure I do. Anyone in the music business would know. I don’t mean rubbish music, which is what I mostly handle: I mean Kate’s kind of music. The serious stuff.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You’re Jude’s grandson,’ she said. ‘I know the story and it isn’t a very nice story, but it isn’t your fault that your grandfather sold out to the Nazis.’ She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. ‘You’re very like him, aren’t you? I mean you’re like his photographs.’
‘So I’ve been told.’ Isarel reached for the wine bottle and re-filled their glasses. ‘Tell us about this man on Hampstead Heath, Lauren.’
‘Conrad Vogel.’
‘Conrad Vogel,’ said Isarel thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I thought that was what you said.’ At his side, Ciaran looked up.
Lauren said, ‘The whole idea of bringing him to justice was like something out of a Thirties novel – The Thirty-Nine Steps or something. John Buchan and Bulldog Drummond, did you ever read those guys?’
‘Yes,’ said Isarel.
‘It was like something out of one of those books. The wronged heroine chasing after the villain to wreak revenge. Corny, but it was something Kate had to do. She was wild with anger and bitterness over what had happened to Richard – well, so we all were. But she believed in that music – the Black Chant – very strongly indeed.’
‘That sounds as if you didn’t,’ said Isarel, and Lauren paused.
‘I thought it was a little far-fetched if you want the truth,’ she said, at last. ‘I certainly believed her about the cult thing, because it’s the kind of thing that kids – especially students – get involved in. But as for the music—I thought it was more likely that Vogel was using – what do you call it – that thing they do with computers that affects the mind?’
‘Fractal,’ said Isarel. ‘Not dangerous by itself, but if it’s used alongside drugs it’s mind-blowing.’
‘I thought he might be using something like that,’ said Lauren. ‘Or even drugs on their own, and either way he was going to get his come-uppance eventually. But I went along with Kate, because I thought that what she was doing might be cathartic, you know? Turning grief into positive action. The business was doing pretty well here – not making a fortune but doing pretty well – and for Kate to take a brief sabbatical wasn’t going to ruin us. How it worked in the end was that Kate travelled about a bit but she made sure never to be away for more than two or three weeks at a stretch. And then she worked like a fiend when she got back. We aren’t really in a nine to five set-up anyway and it pretty much balanced out.’
Ciaran asked carefully, ‘Kate’s husband—Is there any possibility that he could be connected with her disappearance?’
‘God no,’ said Lauren at once. ‘Richard would never do anything that would hurt Kate. He wouldn’t do anything that would hurt anyone. He’s a humanist. Split up the word “gentleman” and you’ve got him. A gentle man. But fun. Nice. He’s smashed up physically, of course.’
‘Were they happily married?’ said Isarel. He caught the faintest flicker of movement from Ciaran.
‘Ecstatic. Old fashioned, isn’t it? Mind you,’ said Lauren, ‘I wouldn’t like to take a Bible oath that Kate hasn’t consoled herself once or twice in the last three years.’
‘She’s taken – lovers?’
‘My, what a word.’ Lauren regarded Ciaran with amusement. ‘Yes, she’s taken lovers. She didn’t screw around, but I’m pretty sure that there’ve been one or two affairs—Listen, she’s thirty-three and she’s clever and attractive and normal. Richard wouldn’t have known, because Kate wouldn’t have let him. And although Kate never said it – too loyal – I’d guess that what happened to him was a bit of a—’ She caught Ciaran’s eye and grinned. ‘It mentally emasculated him,’ said Lauren. ‘Which means Kate would need to blow off a little sexual steam from time to time, like all of us.’ She sent Ciaran another of her mischievous looks. ‘Like most of us,’ she amended. ‘You met her, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’ Ciaran’s voice was devoid of all expression.
Lauren reached for her bag and shrugged her shoulders into her jacket. ‘I think you’d better come out to Kate’s house,’ she said. ‘Richard’s still there of course, and Moira.’
‘I should like,’ said Ciaran thoughtfully, ‘to see Moira again.’
‘Well, maybe between us we can figure something out,’ said Lauren. She looked at them both. ‘All right?’
Ciaran and Isarel exchanged a quick look. Then Isarel said, ‘All right.’