The Assassin King

Oliver’s hand healed overnight as well as could be hoped. Anna cleaned and dressed his cuts again at the kitchen table, bandaging them as lightly as possible to be unobtrusive during filming. They breakfasted companionably on yoghurt, toast and coffee until Elias rang from downstairs. He looked cheerful and well rested, though he’d clearly been up a while, for his Leaf was gleaming from a car wash, its tyres still wetly black. She went back upstairs for her belongings, which Oliver helped her carry down and stow. He put his arm around her waist and gave her a big warm kiss on her cheek. Then he told her he’d see her later and set off in his BMW.

‘You’re seeing him later?’ asked Elias, with that same catch in his voice, too faint to object to, yet there nevertheless. ‘I thought you’d be back off up to York?’

‘I’m booked in with Uncle Dun’s solicitor this afternoon,’ she told him, annoyed both with Oliver for his pointless needling of Elias, and with Elias, for letting himself be needled. ‘That leaves me time to kill. Oliver’s filming at Newark Castle, so I thought I’d kill it there. Then back home tonight, van willing.’

They headed out along Eastgate to the Nettleham road, sitting in tedious queues at each of the roundabouts, which at least gave Anna the opportunity to tell Elias about last night’s attempted bag snatch. ‘For god’s sake!’ he protested. ‘You were supposed to call me.’

‘It was nothing. You were beat.’

‘It wasn’t like they hurt me. They only wanted another bag for their collection. It was coincidence, that’s all.’

‘Maybe so. You’ve still got to tell me.’

‘What do you think I’m doing now?’

Elias laughed, he couldn’t help himself. ‘Okay, fine,’ he said, throwing up his hands in exasperation. ‘You win.’

Anna smiled, surprised to discover how much she’d come to like him. ‘So how’s your day looking?’

‘Bit grim. I’m due the mother of all bollockings.’

‘Whatever for? You caught my uncle’s killer.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Office politics.’

‘If you’d like me to speak up for you…?’

‘Hell, no. But thanks.’

They reached Nettleham, passed police HQ, arrived at the pound. Elias settled the paperwork with the duty officer while Anna checked out the van. Despite its age and cranky handling, it was a useful beast, rugged yet still nimble enough to reach the hardest places on the farm, and with plenty of room for equipment in its rear, which her uncle had changed around depending on the tasks at hand. The ladder was missing from its roof rack, but otherwise it was fuller than she’d ever seen. His hedge-cutters were inside, along with the petrol-driven augur he’d used to drill fencepost holes along the lane, some noise cancelling headphones, safety gloves, goggles and disposable breathing masks.

His portable toolkit was there, some telescopic tree loppers, a coil of orange nylon rope, a torch and a pack of spare batteries. A pair of ragged old bath towels stuffed into a large plastic bag were damp to the touch and almost black with grime. There were two timber planks and a handsaw with pale flecks of sawdust in its teeth, which was very unlike Uncle Dun, a stickler for cleaning and oiling his tools after use. His drone was in there too, along with its remote control. ‘I bought it for his birthday a few years back,’ she told Elias, when he arrived with a receipt for her to sign. ‘Second hand, of course. I couldn’t afford a new one. But still brilliant for finding lost baggage trains beneath your fields.’

‘I wish you’d got him one with GPS,’ said Elias. ‘Then we’d know where he went that day.’

‘He used it last Sunday?’

‘We think so, yes. But his photos are all of plain flat fields.’

‘This is Lincolnshire,’ she pointed out.

‘And don’t I know it.’ He took back the signed receipt, consulted his watch. ‘Look, I really need to head off. Music to face, and all that. Unless there’s anything else?’

‘No. That’s great. And thanks for everything.’

‘No worries.’ He stood there a few moments longer. ‘And please. I know you hate asking for help…’

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘Come on. At least pretend.’

‘Okay. I’ll call. I promise.’ Aware she might not see him again, she wanted to make some extra show of gratitude for all he’d done for her, but she dithered so long over it that he nodded and returned to his Leaf and left.

She fixed the van’s front bumper with gorilla tape, then mended the buckle on her bag with it too. She still didn’t trust it to hold much weight, however, so she transferred most of its contents to her overnight bag, while pocketing her uncle’s wallet so that she didn’t forget to take it in to show his solicitor. She still had time before filming started at Newark, so she downloaded her uncle’s drone photos onto her laptop. But Elias was right: save for a wedge-shaped copse, a pair of scarlet oaks and a short stretch of cobbled lane, the latest set could have been taken anywhere. There was, however, enough overlap between them for her to crop them and assemble them into a single composite image. But still she didn’t recognise it, and then she was out of time.

The van was a cranky beast to drive any distance, with soft brakes, temperamental electrics, poor visibility and bad enough fumes that she lowered her window to let some fresh air in, despite the October chill. Then it began to rain, so she raised it back up again. The dual carriageway south to Newark was ugly yet evocative – for Anna, at least – passing as it did through the Templars’ ancient heartlands of Byard’s Leap and Temple Bruer, of Willoughton, Aslackby, Eagle, East Mere and South Witham, huge properties endowed by wealthy barons seeking to avoid the hellfire that their lives had often so deserved.

The Templars had acquired many thousands of acres of prime Lincolnshire land this way, then had worked them with free labour, thanks to the order’s vows of poverty. They’d been excused most tolls and taxes too, by virtue of their sacred mission and their closeness to power, and they’d been highly entrepreneurial as well, introducing windmills, setting up their own smelting works, creating a pioneering banking network and owning whole fleets of trading ships.

They’d thus become a money-making machine, and not all of it had gone to fund the crusades. Numerous European regimes had depended on Templar loans, an arrangement that had suited everyone until Philip III of France had found a different method of payback, accusing them of satanism, sodomy and all kinds of heretical practices as an excuse to destroy the order and confiscate their wealth. But that had still been a century away while John had been on the throne, and he’d borrowed as much from them as anyone, courtesy of his advisor Aymeric de St Maur, head of the Knights Templar in England, and William Marshal’s closest friend.

Something about this thought made Anna frown. She drifted from her lane. A lorry coming up behind blasted her with its horn. The shock made her slow right down and move over almost onto the hard shoulder, allowing the traffic behind to overtake – all except for a white Tesla several cars back that slowed with her, to stay the same distance behind, putting her instantly on her guard. She stamped her foot down and accelerated away as fast as the old van allowed, watching closely in her mirrors to see if the Tesla would speed up with her. But it held the same slow pace until it vanished from her view.