Where to begin the obituary? Going in on the lightning strike would be crass, but Jake had to start somewhere and Florence had given him a wealth of material to choose from. The plink of an arriving email interrupted his cogitations. It was a response from the Cabinet Office. His Freedom of Information request had been rejected. Already. That was weird – usually they prevaricated for weeks. Jake swept aside the sea of press releases and business cards that covered his desk and a tower of new post capsized under the wash. There was a package from King’s College London.
Britton.
Jake turned the parcel around in his hands – it crinkled to the touch and when he opened it he was assailed by the whiff of old paper. This was normally a pleasant perfume, but now the odour only heightened his unease. He turned the package upside down and a bundle of pages spilled out.
Dear Mr Wolsey,
I hope you won’t find this overdramatic, but I want to entrust this to you. If anything untoward happens to me, I hope you will have the decency to give it your full attention.
Respectfully yours,
Roger Britton
Jake’s mouth was dry.
Well … there was something that struck me as a bit rum.
An idea came to him and he called the Royal Mail.
“I’m doing a survey on collection times,” he said. “You’ve got a letterbox on the Embankment, just west of Blackfriars Bridge. It was supposed to be emptied at 10 a.m. yesterday. Could you confirm whether that happened on time?”
“Right …” Suspicion seeped from the press officer’s voice. “Let me find out – we’ll call you back.”
As Jake waited, his gaze settled on a page of The Histories by Polybius, a Roman historian who lived in the second century BC. Britton had quadruple-underlined a paragraph.
The Romans succeeded in less than 53 years in bringing under their rule almost the entire inhabited world. It was an achievement without parallel in human history.
Jake frowned, rummaging through the pile. Another Polybius quotation caught his eye, this one on the defeat of Hannibal by the Roman general Scipio Africanus. Britton had marked it with a star.
Scipio made the men under his command more sanguine and more ready to face perilous enterprises by instilling into them the belief his projects were divinely inspired.
This was off the hook. Madness.
Amid the mass of pages lay a single paperback – Life of Constantine, written in the fourth century AD by Eusebius, a Roman historian and a Christian. It was the only unmarked item. Jake was still examining the book when the press officer phoned back.
“I can confirm that post-box postcode WC2 2PR was emptied at 10.06 a.m. yesterday,” he said. “That’s well within our targets.”
Jake digested the information. “How can you be so sure of the time?”
“We record the progress of our vans through sat-navs. The collection was spot on – you won’t be twisting this into a negative story I trust?”
Jake ignored the question. “When was the next collection made?”
There was a clicking of buttons. “Ten past four in the afternoon.”
That was four hours after the boat steward had seen what purported to be a Royal Mail van empty the post-box a dozen paces from Britton’s cooling body. Jake felt a little ill as he replaced the receiver. It was unreal. Plus it made no sense. When he ran a hand through his mane his hair felt claggy – he’d overslept that morning and had no time to shower.
On impulse he dialled Florence Chung.
“Hello, who is this please?”
Saints preserve us, he was actually speaking to her.
“It’s Jake,” he managed, regretting not having planned what to say. “We met earlier.”
“Oh. You.”
“Listen. There’s been a development. Can we catch up?”
There was another pause. Then she said, “No, sorry. I’m flying out to Turkey this evening – the field trip’s going ahead.”
“I received a package in the post today from Roger Britton.”
“Really?” Florence’s whole voice had changed. “What was in it?”
“Pages, lots of pages – torn out of old hardbacks by the looks of it. He’s underlined a few sentences. And one whole book – Life of Constantine by Eusebius.”
“What else? Anything about Istanbul?”
Jake shuffled the pile. Bingo! “Yes – there’s a diagram of the Agya Sophia here too.”
The cathedral had been built in the city by Romans fifteen hundred years ago – it still stood.
“I have to see this diagram.”
“Well … let me come with you then.”
Bemusement morphed into laughter. “I don’t think so. Look Jake –”
“I can cover your dig,” he interrupted, thinking fast. “Britton’s death is the perfect peg.”
“Peg? Excuse me?”
He bit his lip. “Sorry. Sorry. ‘Peg’ was insensitive.”
“Why are you even interested in this?”
Jake could almost hear Florence’s eyes narrowing. His thoughts crystallized. Freak occurrence of lightning aside, he was onto something here – and it centred on Britton. This sort of lead came along rarely; if he made something of it perhaps he could turn things around at the paper. He should stick close to Florence. Their presence in Istanbul might draw out more information.
“Hello?” She sounded impatient.
“It’ll make a cracking feature,” Jake blustered. “And great publicity for the university too. Besides, do you want me to share Britton’s package with you or not?”
She sighed. “Fine, you can come. It doesn’t look like I have any choice, does it? But you’ll need to clear it with our media centre first.”
The reporter was grinning like a loon as he put the phone down. Things were moving again. To Istanbul! To Constantinople, as it once was! To the city founded by the Emperor Constantine, the ruler who had made Christianity the state religion of Rome. The crossroads of Europe and Asia.
His eyes were drawn back to that innocuous white book.