IT WAS CLOSE TO HALF-PAST NOON AND THEIR APPOINTED LUNCH DATE AS Simon and Lucy sprinted across Thirty-fourth Street in midtown Manhattan though the phalanxes of yellow cabs. They escaped into the door of Roland Brown’s office building, glancing fleetingly at the boards to check which floor they wanted, then they swirled into the elevator and were accelerated upward. Lucy had been feeling tense and unusually emotional since she had checked into her room last night, the time difference dissuading her from calling Alex; but she offered Simon a warm smile now. In an hour or so it would all be over, their mission hopefully accomplished, and despite their furtive looks along hotel corridors and across streets everywhere, there’d been no sign of anyone, or anything, to trouble them.
The elevator reached the top and slid open smoothly; and their faces fell. Before them stood a security man, and beyond him they could see black-and-yellow tapes announcing a “crime scene,” which was obscured by the heavy glass doors of Roland’s seventeenth-floor office. It looked as if some removal men had been spirited away, leaving behind the chaos of an unfinished job. Files, books, and other pieces of equipment were scattered about the area in disorganized piles.
A neat, well-groomed woman of about forty was in conversation with a uniformed policeman and a plainclothes officer not far from the elevator door, and in the rear of the offices men in white overalls moved about like ghosts.
The trio closest to them turned toward Simon and Lucy as the elevator doors opened.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked a little sharply, stepping forward. She directed her words to Lucy.
“Good morning. I’m Lucy King, and this is Simon Whelan. We’ve flown especially from London for an appointment with Mr. Brown.” Lucy’s words came in rather short phrases. It was obvious Mr. Brown was not going to be “at home.”
“Oh! Yes, he mentioned it. I’m sorry, I’m Pearl Garrett, one of Roland’s partners.” They hardly paused to shake hands, before she resumed. “He’s been called away urgently to Boston, and I meant to leave a message at your hotel but, as you can see”—she broke off to invite their eyes over the mêlée in front of them—“I’ve had my hands full since the police called me in at seven this morning. He’ll call you, Lucy—that’s what he wanted me to tell you. At around six tonight. He has the number, and suggests you meet at his apartment first thing in the morning. Which will be pleasanter than here.” Her voice inflected exasperation.
“Mrs. Garrett. I’m sorry, but could we have you back with us?” The plainclothes officer drew her attention to the gesturing from one of the men inside in a white jumpsuit.
“You’ll have to excuse me. You can see we have a small problem. We keep a great many highly sensitive pictures in our files here, not all of which are backed up on disk. The older ones sometimes attract paranoia from interested parties in politics or entertainment. Dirty underwear closets, you could say. We still don’t know what’s missing.” She called the elevator for them again, smiling as the door opened almost immediately. “You all have a nice day, now, and go play tourists. This city is like Disneyland for adults, don’t you think?” And she turned away without waiting for a word of reply.
“Coincidence? Or should we worry?” Simon’s voice completely lacked its habitual humor as the elevator arrived at the ground level.
Lucy was unsure how to answer. A sea of faces came at her from the opposite direction; but even in the tide of humanity set free at lunchtime in this great city, and despite the events of the last twenty minutes, all she could think of was calling Alex. For an uneasy hour before the excursion to Roland’s building, she’d had a sinking feeling he was under duress. She was wondering about Max’s head injury. Privacy was elusive, and of course she was frustrated with the immediate situation—and also exhausted from a restless night in New York. But something else chafed, though she couldn’t identify what it was.
Simon reached across through the throng of people, and put a friendly hand on her arm.
“Let’s find ourselves a coffee and some lunch anyway?”
She nodded, grateful for a chance to stop. The frustrations of the morning threatened to overwhelm her, and she now owned up to her exhaustion. How bizarre—that a break-in the night before should leave police crawling through the building; never mind that Will’s agent had canceled their appointment. His partner had said only that he’d flown to Boston for the day. Wasn’t that strange? After the great push to get there—the run from Lucy’s office via the hospital, the lightning rush from Battersea to Heathrow, the oddly distressing wrench from Alex, a night without sleep, and now this canceled appointment—Lucy felt flat and unwell.
They found the Tick Tock Diner, and while Lucy disappeared to the ladies’ room, Simon ordered her an open-face sandwich and black coffee. Against her usual practice, she’d requested the caffeine to give her a jolt. Joining him at the booth, she peered into the bread at the filling, felt a wave of nausea, and realized she couldn’t manage a bite. He read her alarm, put down the sweet potato fry on the end of his fork, and leaned over to squeeze her arm.
“I’ve ordered badly, haven’t I? Should have taken the veggie burger?” Simon had tried following Alex’s directive about low-salt, freshly prepared food, avoiding anything that might be reheated, and realized he’d made a poor choice. “The look on your face says a good vet might recover that lamb’s heartbeat!”
She managed a horrified laugh. “I’m sorry—it’s not the food. I don’t know quite what’s wrong. I want to be here with you, and see Roland. I’m even glad of the chance to reassert my independence—away from Alex. But I feel oddly torn, as though I’ve left part of myself behind. I’m not altogether comfortable with that.”
“Just chill, sweetheart. You’re shattered—as am I. And not even a night of bingeing as an excuse. My mind was solving riddles through broken sleep. It was like a collision between Bilbo Baggins and Oedipus Rex! I was even trying to work out the numerology of certain words. I must be going mad.” He looked at her remarkable face, saw that it was blanched of all color, and immediately recalled Alex’s quiet dictum to make sure Lucy ate something regularly and took her pills on time. “And if we admit to it, we’re both thrown by this business with Roland. The circumstances seem odd, though we should keep it in perspective and wait until tomorrow before we panic. But, Lucy, for God’s sake, have some compassion and eat something for me, or your boyfriend’s going to shoot me such a look of disdain when we get back. I’d rather Will’s worst temper than Alex’s controlled displeasure.”
Lucy picked at the salad on her plate and swallowed her immunosuppressants. “I’ve been thinking, Simon. Alex is thirty-four, like the magic number in the Tablet of Jupiter. The clues about being ‘loyal’ and ‘true’ indicate the knot which is the Stafford insignia. When I consider the documents, I’m beginning to think they tell our story.”
“And we’re having this conversation on Thirty-fourth Street, which is spooky. What are you getting at, Luce?”
“You told me you were with Alex one night, at Will’s computer, when that Sator Square we were looking at on the plane just appeared?” Simon nodded. “There seems to be a pattern about the Venus and Adonis story in some of the sheets, don’t you agree? The beautiful young man, pursued by Venus?”
“Go on.”
“Is that Will and Siân? She’s desperate to tie him, he runs off on a wild hunt—and here’s the strange thing—literally is gored on the bridge, in the thigh, like Adonis. Alex told me the injury was brutal, though it’s not what killed him. But it’s odd, you’ll allow? When Venus pursued her wounded lover, the white roses she trod on pricked her feet, and her blood turned them red in pure love. You remember Will’s white roses. Though we’ve never determined why he sent them.”
Simon was intrigued by the connection of ideas. “Strange leaps, Lucy. But Philip Sidney died of a wound to his thigh too—gave away his greaves to a soldier who needed them. And obviously more than his greaves, as it was a musket ball in his thigh which turned horribly gangrenous. It took him days to die.”
“You said that to show how unrelated things are; but he was a pupil of John Dee.” Lucy omitted to say how strongly Sidney resembled the man she’d seen that night on the barge on the Thames. She’d visited his several portraits at the Gallery—a man of many images, which testified to the cult status he acquired after his death; and the likeness was unmistakable. A nobleman, poet, critic, as arresting as Byron—indeed, the Byron of his age. But how could she begin to explain that strange Halloween experience to anyone who wasn’t there? No sane person would give it credit, though, she thought. Alex and Amel might not judge it so. They’d seen something too. “The words on one of the texts are Sidney’s, Simon,” she continued. “The other odd thing is, my name means ‘light.’ Do you remember the lines about the ‘Lady of Light’ starting her journey in the candle month? ‘Lucy’ is a lady of light; and my February birthday is the month of Candlemas. I was born on February the third, and my father ominously used to say, ‘The music died on this day, Lucy.’ That reference is the one I showed you on the flight, in one of the texts.”
Simon thought this crushingly sad, and wondered what it revealed about her past. “Yes, I remember now—the day of the plane crash, with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper and someone—in the fifties, I think?”
Lucy was nodding. She read the feeling in Simon’s look, but didn’t want to talk about it with him. She rushed on, “We come to Alex. Some clues point to Alexander the Great, and the Stafford knot, and roses. And one I haven’t discussed. One of the first texts, in the oldest batch, talks about the River Styx, going through the realms of the dead. That was my first real date with Alex, on Halloween. The cruise was called ‘The Spirits of the Dead from the Past,’ and I dressed as Ariadne.”
“That’s why you’re interested in the pet names! We should analyze each text until we find out which place you’ve reached, in the story. Then we’ll know how it resolves. And in the meantime, as we’re on Thirty-fourth Street, let’s indeed go ‘play tourists’ and look at the Empire State. It must be relevant.”
A FEW MINUTES AFTER SEVEN P.M., ALEX SWUNG THE CAR AROUND THE CORNER into Redcliffe Square and glanced at Siân’s apartment window. He relaxed a little when he saw her lights on, and made a circuit to find an empty space. Maybe she’d gone out for something. She hadn’t answered his call a short time before, and he was worried she’d reneged on their arrangement. He climbed out, pressed the key, and the lights flashed.
Walking around the square, he looked more closely at the bulk of St. Luke’s Church, its tall spire dominating the green. Since last night’s conversation with Grace about the architecture of Chartres, he found himself more concentrated on the Gothic Revival shape—which looked forbiddingly grim, however, in the still wintry March light. The arrival of summertime after the upcoming weekend would bring a welcome psychological shift.
He noticed Siân’s blue Fiat Uno parked in a residents’ space just beyond the doorstep to her apartment building. She can’t have gone far, he thought, remembering the emotional state she was in yesterday morning, and feeling some relief. He pushed the buzzer, but there was no response; he stepped back and looked up at the building again. That was her light, without doubt; so he returned up the steps and pushed the bell again. Nothing. He checked his watch: he was only a few minutes late. Was she in the bath? He dialed her number again from his cell phone; the line was now busy. He pondered for a minute or two. She could easily reach the entry phone to let him in if she was talking—unless she was locked in conversation with Calvin and refusing to be distracted. Then he suddenly worried about whether she might have done something silly, and quickly pushed another bell. A voice on the intercom asked his name.
“Hi there. It’s Dr. Alex Stafford. I’ve come to see Siân, in flat five. The lights are on but she’s not responding to her bell. Could you possibly let me in? She should be expecting me, and I’m worried she might not be feeling well.”
“Which flat did you say?” the voice tested.
“Siân Powell—in flat five. I’m Will Stafford’s brother.”
“Oh yes—the doctor. The top-floor flat, isn’t it?”
Alex shifted his weight, suddenly impatient, and listened for the door release. As he pushed, he saw the long, badly lit corridor leading up the steep stairs that vanished into night. He moved quickly toward them. On the landing above the third floor, he paused for a hurried breath and realized he was tired. He’d left Grace rather late and hadn’t slept one complete hour afterward, hoping Lucy would call—fruitlessly, as it turned out—and an emergency had brought him in at six, meaning he’d just finished a twelve-hour day. Now he looked up toward Siân’s front door, and from this angle it seemed to be ajar. Odd, he thought; and he continued upward, before his eyes confirmed in poor light that the door was indeed unlocked. It was possible she’d gone up to the roof garden with a drink and left it open for him. He climbed the last two flights to the top of the building and pushed the hall light, which failed to come on. Trust Will to pick a place at the top of the world, with no elevator.
In the gloom of the hall landing something looked out of place. He approached the door and could see the line of a long split in the frame, which showed the whiteness of newly cracked wood against the cream gloss paint of the doorjamb. The security chain swung from the inside of the frame by its torn screws. What the hell had he stumbled upon? His senses were strained as he listened avidly. Not a sound. Gingerly, he pushed the door open to reveal the hallway of the flat and the living room beyond. Orderly chaos greeted his eyes; shelves were denuded of books and artefacts that had been placed in piles along the hall. Through the door leading to the living room he could see a continuation of the same disorder. Drawers had been turned out, books opened, some then placed upside down to one side. The lid of the piano was open. The flat had been professionally and systematically searched. Then he saw something move, three-quarters of the way down the hall, away from the light.
She huddled against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest in a fetal position. She had her arms wrapped around her and she held something tightly to her heart. The phone receiver bounced gently up and down on its coiled cable next to her from the handset on the wall above. He picked a path between the debris and kneeled beside her. She turned her face to him, and he noticed a trickle of blood running from her nose. Even in poor light he could see that a large bruise was forming around the cut on the side of her high cheekbone. Her blue eyes stared at him.
“It’s you,” she said in a small voice. “I thought he’d come back.” She put her arms around his neck and hugged him, her tremble now giving way to a deep tremor.
“It’s OK,” he said quietly. He pulled back a little and looked intently at her. No obvious head injury, pupils apparently normal, pulse a little too fast—this he assessed in seconds. “What’s happened, Siân?” He ruled out rape, given the condition of the flat. He reached for his cell phone and started to dial; but she stopped him, shook her head, tried to pull herself up.
“I started to call the police, Alex, but he threw me against the wall and told me he’d be back if I rang anyone. I thought,” she said, matter-of-factly, “that he was going to kill me. But he just hit me with the back of his hand.” She rubbed her nose and looked at the blood on her fingers, winced as she touched her cheek. “He told me not to move and I wouldn’t be hurt.” She started to rise again and this time made it to her feet.
There were a dozen questions Alex wanted to ask, starting with a description of who “he” was, but his job had taught him to take things slowly and to calm her first. He suddenly realized the object she’d been clutching was the remnants of the leather jacket Will had been wearing on the day of his death. It was cut along its seams, for the emergency staff at the hospital to remove it efficiently. On the floor in front of Siân were the rest of Will’s clothes from that day—the T-shirt, badly torn jeans, even the underclothes. He’d packed his full leathers away for the last phase of his journey home, had worn his lighter clothing including this favorite Ducati jacket, obviously chosen for comfort rather than protection. The plastic hospital bag that had held everything was upended in the bedroom opposite.
Siân traced Alex’s thoughts and looked at him guiltily. “Henry handed me the bag from the hospital after it was returned from the coroner’s. I only asked for the jacket: it was my last birthday present to him a year before the accident, and he loved it so much. It was a limited classic—do you remember?—and I had to order it specially from the States.” Alex nodded once. “I don’t think Henry wanted to deal with any of it. I couldn’t either, so I just stuffed it in the cupboard, forgot about it until he pulled everything out now.”
He listened to her explanation, and put his arm around her to support her into the living room. He propped her on the side of a deep chair while he cleared the books piled on the seat, then helped her into it. “Lean right back for a second, Siân. I want to have a quick check for any real damage.” He pulled a pocket flashlight from his jacket and flashed her eyes until she flinched, happy with the reaction. Then he switched on her reading lamp, turned her face toward it, and examined the cartilage of her nose and the cut on her cheek. “This needs a butterfly suture, but it shouldn’t scar. He had a ring on.” She nodded. “Which part of you hit the wall?”
Siân indicated her left shoulder and rubbed the upper arm area tenderly, her face contorting.
“Serious pain?”
“It hurts; but I don’t think it’s broken.”
Alex tested its strength, asking her to pull against his own hand, which she managed. “No. Nor do I. Tell me about it?”
“I went out for wine. When I came back you’d rung. I heard the doorbell, thought you were just early, and I pushed the buzzer. When he knocked I didn’t check the spyhole—the light’s out in the hall. But the security chain was on. I turned the lock, then he threw his weight against the door. The chain just split away. He shoved past me, hit me, told me not to move. Then he did this…” She looked around at the mayhem, and started to cry for the first time. “I thought if I called the police he’d come back, and hurt me seriously.”
Alex was gently moving her neck from side to side and seemed satisfied that her spine was undamaged. She hadn’t let go of the jacket. “How long was he here, Siân? What did he look like? Heavily built?”
“I don’t know, Alex. Twenty minutes? No, probably more. He was physically big, not particularly tall, wearing an expensive coat—MaxMara, I’d say; brown leather gloves—one of which he deliberately removed when he hit me, and then put on again. His shoes were expensive, matched his gloves.” Alex smiled quietly at the sartorial details Siân had absorbed with her professional eye. “He asked me where my boyfriend was, threatened to hit me again when I didn’t answer. He was searching for something I don’t think he found. Did he mean Will?”
“I’d have thought Calvin.” Alex’s mind was racing. He looked once around the flat, then picked up Siân’s coat. “I was supposed to get something to him today, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. He still hasn’t turned up?” She shook her head. “Come on. I’ve a friend in Casualty up the road at Chelsea and Westminster. Let’s get you seen to, then you’re coming home with me. We’ll clean up here tomorrow after it’s been inspected; this has gone far enough.”
LUCY LOOKED DOWN, BUT THE HEIGHT DIDN’T ALARM HER. THE LONG, silky strands of her hair whipped back in the breeze, and the fresh air had brightened her olive complexion. She looked a thousand times better, and grinned at her companion. “You knew it, didn’t you? That this was the clue in the text about the ‘strange simian energy,’ and the movies, and the Art Deco foyer.”
“Not for sure until we got here. The King Kong riddle was easy, and the needle pointing upward at the tip of the apple tree—the Big Apple, of course. But I wasn’t sure about the ten thousand square feet of marble, until now. It’s all about being on Thirty-fourth Street. Why is this damned number so significant?”
Lucy realized her cell phone was ringing, the sound almost dead in the wind. Too early for Alex, she thought. He was having dinner with Siân, and it was only nine o’clock in the UK.
“It’s Sandy. Where have I caught you?” His voice seemed richer than ever amid the American accents surrounding her. She cried with the pleasure of realization—or the effects of the wind. What did that nickname tell her?
“On top of the Empire State Building on Thirty-fourth Street. As you’re always ahead of us, you’ll know it’s one of our mysteries.” She changed to a more serious tone. “Alex, is everything all right? I’ve been worrying about you, but you’re at dinner, and I didn’t want to intrude. It’s not Max, is it?”
Alex shook his head to himself, hardly surprised by her instincts anymore. “No, not Max, Lucy. It’s Siân. She had an unwelcome visitor at the flat. I wasn’t able to get the packet to our go-between—who was nowhere to be found. I’ve just tracked down his mother, and she said he’s been in Nantucket for a day or so—though he’s not with her now. He’s on a flight tonight from Boston—”
“Boston?” she interrupted.
“It sounds very last minute, I think. I’ve no idea what he’s playing at, but I won’t say too much just now. Siân’s here with me tonight. She’s shaken and bruised, and her flat’s not secure. I’ve slipped downstairs to run her a bath, but I need a word with Simon about his contact at New Scotland Yard.”
Lucy was too horrified to press him, and passed the phone across. Simon’s immediate volley of expletives was unleashed so forcefully that everyone on the viewing platform turned to see what was wrong.
“The only reason we complied with their dictates to keep the police out of things was their promise to keep everyone else out of harm, as well—which they’ve now signally failed to do.” Alex almost sounded more tired than angry, Simon thought, but it was always difficult detecting just what was in his voice. “They’ve broken the rules they set, so it’s time we put things on our own terms.”
“Everyone is expedient in their politics, Alex. When you find Calvin, promise me you’ll handcuff the bastard until I get back.”
Simon took his Palm organizer from his jacket pocket, and a lot of detailed information was exchanged on both sides. Simon shook his head angrily. Lucy listened, an icy hand clutching the pit of her stomach, while numbers were given, notes taken, and Simon’s opinions offered. From the responses at this end, though, Alex was clearly more unwilling to comment. Simon eventually gave the phone back to its owner.
She pushed her ear against it to block the wind. “I love you too,” she was quite sure he said; but she hadn’t spoken at all. Then, in a voice firmer than Simon’s and surprisingly comforting, he closed the conversation with words that left her speechless. “Work out the numerology of John Dee’s name; it adds up to thirty-four. And Lucy, do you know your birthday is the thirty-fourth day of the year?”