Authors: Mark Roberts
‘Who knows about it?’
‘As far as I know, no one. I haven’t even told Baxter. Yet.’
‘Well done. Don’t tell him. How do you know about this?’
‘I intercepted a voicemail message on Rosen’s phone. He went out and left it on his desk. He went out on business related to the case and left his fucking mobile behind – sums
it up.’
Taylor laughed and Harrison joined in.
‘This ties in with a whole load of other shit.’
‘I thought it might,’ Harrison bluffed.
‘What did she say on the phone, Mrs Rosen?’
‘She said she’d got an antenatal clinic appointment.’
‘Where and when?’
‘St Thomas’s, ten in the morning tomorrow. Explains why Rosen keeps pissing off every five minutes.’
‘Well, I guess their secret is our secret. Ten o’clock, St Thomas’s. You got Mrs Rosen’s number?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Give me your mobile number and hers.’
Harrison reeled off the numbers and Taylor fled them on his phone.
‘No, Robert,’ he anticipated before Harrison spoke. ‘You don’t need mine yet. You’re on the way up. Well done. But you’re back on Planet Rosen, right now.
You’re my eyes and ears. I’ll be in touch with instructions but, for now, just keep watching and listening.’
They could hear two sets of footsteps approaching in the darkness beyond the car park.
‘I’ll be in touch, Robert. As of now, you’re working for me, right?’
‘Right.’
Taylor turned and walked away. As Harrison watched, it took an effort of will not to trail after him and ask question after question.
Harrison dialled 118 118 as his gaze followed Taylor turning the corner.
‘I’d like the general switchboard, Greater Manchester Police. Get the number and put me straight through.’
The moon slipped behind a bank of cloud as the blueness of Taylor’s eyes sank into Harrison’s memory, while his future flowed before him like a river.
He got the switchboard and asked to be connected to Taylor’s line in the PSU. The phone rang and the answering machine kicked in.
‘You’ve reached the voicemail of Chief Superintendent Daniel Taylor.’ Harrison recognized his voice. ‘I’m out of the office on holiday until the eighth of April. If
it’s urgent, contact Superintendent—’
Harrison ended the call and made a mental note of the date. It was 24 March. He noted the date because he was filled with an inner certainty that this was the day his life turned around.
I
t was after ten o’clock at night when Rosen finally got home. On entering the house, he could tell from the whole feel of the place that his
wife was already in bed. The downstairs felt empty and he wondered, as he headed quietly upstairs, whether Sarah was already asleep.
The bedroom was in almost complete darkness but he could discern her shape in the bed from stray light on the landing
‘Sarah?’ He spoke softly, so that if she was awake she would hear him but if she was asleep he wouldn’t disturb her. She didn’t respond.
Rosen went to the bathroom and took off his jacket, catching his reflection in the mirror and wondering at what point in his life he’d started looking quite so ancient.
He turned on the bath taps and closed the door so the sound would not wake her. When he lifted his head again, he found Sarah standing in the doorway.
‘I’m sorry I’m back so late,’ he said, reminding himself that, of all the detectives’ wives or husbands he knew – the ones who were married to civilians
– Sarah was a paragon of patience over the chronic hours kept by her spouse. And yet, tonight, there could be no doubt, from her body language and the look on her face, that she was
angry.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, and turned off the tap.
‘You could have called me back.’
‘I could have called you back, Sarah, had you called me in the first place.’
She looked past him and returned to the bedroom.
He followed her there and turned on the light. She sat on the edge of the bed.
‘When did you call?’ he said.
‘This afternoon.’
He took his mobile phone from his pocket and scrolled through calls received and new voicemails.
‘Nothing there, Sarah.’
‘I left a voicemail message, for God’s sake.’
‘I’ve had five voicemails today, but none from you.’
He sat next to her.
‘Do you want to see my phone?’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. If you say you didn’t get a call on your phone, I’m not going to turn this into an investigation. I honestly know I called you and left a
voicemail message. But I know you wouldn’t lie about such a thing.’
There was enough of a chink in her annoyance for him to place a hand over hers.
‘I left a message for you at school,’ he said.
‘I didn’t get it.’
‘That’s hardly surprising. Probably turn up as a slip in your pigeon hole sometime towards the end of next week. And I’m sorry I didn’t call here but things have just . .
. escalated today. I’ve worked like a dog, end of story. What did you call me to say?’
‘I’ve got an appointment with the consultant in the morning.’
‘I’ll be there. What time?’
‘Ten o’clock, St Thomas’s.’
He smiled, while thinking about how much he had to do tomorrow. He was going to have to be up two hours earlier than he’d hoped.
‘Can you make it? Realistically? If you can’t, I’ll go alone.’
Guilt dug its claws into him and shook him around for fun.
‘I’ll go into the incident room early, set a few things up, delegate and meet you there at the hospital. Quarter to ten, OK?’
She softened and smiled. ‘OK.’
‘Which clinic?’
‘Antenatal, would you believe. I thought you’d dismissed me, thrown me down the pecking order of important things to do.’
‘I don’t always get it right, Sarah, in fact, I feel as if I rarely do, but you’re my number one priority, always. It’s just sometimes . . . It’s like I have to
hack my way through the jungle just to be with you. A policeman’s wife’s lot isn’t always a happy one.’
‘Better than being married to a bloody teacher.’ She smiled again.
‘You’re right there!’
‘Don’t push your luck.’
‘I need a bath.’
‘I know you do,’ she said, sniffing the air between them.
As he turned off the bath taps, David heard his wife softly snoring from the bedroom and made a strict mental note to himself not to fall asleep in the alluring warmth of the bath. Sinking into
its embrace, he closed his eyes and started developing ideas on what to do with the CCTV footage from the British Library: how and when it would be best to release it.
Rosen pictured Dwyer and Flint in the British Library and thought,
Let the mind games begin
.
A
t seven o’clock in the morning, Rosen found a pen drive on his desk and a note from Gold, explaining that Karen Jones had left the stick for
him the day before and wanted to see him. The words, ‘Had her knickers in a bit of a twist’ were underlined twice.
When he called her, Karen Jones was already on her way into work early, to try to catch him first thing. Within an hour, she stood with him in front of the assembled murder investigation team
and a troupe of twelve officers drafted in to assist with the trawl through the Capaneusian Bible.
Rosen began with an account of the meeting at Charing Cross Station with Father Sebastian and his subsequent disappearance from St Mark’s.
He showed the images from the John Ritblat Gallery of Flint with another suspect, believed to be Paul Dwyer.
Baxter arrived in the room just as a question came from the team.
‘The Capaneusian Bible. We’ve got in on a website, right?’
‘I’ll pass you over to Karen.’
Karen went on: ‘Yes and no. The Capaneusian Bible is an inverted Bible. We have the whole of the Old Testament but I can’t get into the New Testament. The password for the website is
protected and I can’t as yet crack it. I’ve called in help from Steve Lewis from Scotland Yard’s Police Central e-Crime Unit.’
Across the room, Rosen saw Baxter shake his head. Karen handed over to Rosen again.
‘We’re going to have to root through the books of the Old Testament while Karen gets on with cracking open the New Testament. The last line of the last book of the Old Testament, the
Book of Malachi, states that the New Testament will be made known only to true believers, and that in the New Testament instructions will be given to disciples down the ages and across the world.
Is Dwyer getting his orders from the New Testament of Capaneus? Is Flint giving him access to it? What can we pick up from the Old Testament?’
Rosen handed out a set of papers, a memo with instructions. ‘Take one and pass these on; you’re each responsible for three books of the Old Testament of Alessio Capaneus. Read
through, make notes, dig out anything you can, stick any names that crop up on the NCP, run it through HOLMES. If you’re stuck, Mike Marsh is here to help Carol Bellwood process entries into
HOLMES.’
Apart from the rustling of paper, there was the silent diligence of an examination hall.
‘David?’ said Feldman. ‘We heard back yet on the DNA from the water bottle?’
‘Blank, sorry to say. OK,’ said Rosen, ‘let’s crack on.’
S
arah’s phone was turned off. At twenty past ten, as Rosen hurried from his car to St Thomas’s – heart jittering and head
pounding with the stress of being late – he tried to call her for the fourth time since he’d left the incident room. He was running woefully behind. When he walked into St
Thomas’s reception, he was faced with a dilemma: go to the clinic and try to find Sarah, or stay at the reception and intercept her as she made her way out of the huge building.
He opted to stay at the main doors, hoping she wouldn’t use one of the other, less obvious routes out of the hospital building.
For a whole half-hour, human life, in all its stages of glory and decay, passed him by. He reached into his pocket again for his phone, knowing that in a hospital setting hers would still be
turned off, and that phoning her was as futile as it was desperate. Still, he called her and left a voicemail message.
‘I’m in reception at St Thomas’s. It’s moving on to eleven. I’ve been here since ten-twentyish, I’m really, really sorry . . .’
The word
sorry
echoed sourly within his skull and, as it faded into silence, he saw her face in the oncoming tide of strangers. She was smiling and looked calm.
He raised a hand, waved, but she didn’t see him. He walked towards her and her eyes met his. For a moment, it was as if she didn’t recognize him. Her eyes flicked right and back
again in the space of a second. But then she smiled. She wasn’t angry with him, which made Rosen even angrier with himself.
‘Sarah, I’m so, so sorry . . .’
She held up a hand.
‘Do you know what? Everything’s OK. It’s a perfectly healthy pregnancy, that’s what the consultant Mr Gilling-Smith said; everything’s good and the baby’s
fine. I saw the main man himself and his senior registrar, Dr Tom Dempsey.’
Relief swept through Rosen and he felt his whole body relax as the news sank in. He had many questions but, for a few moments, he was tongue-tied by happiness.
Finally, he managed, ‘Did they do any tests on you?’
‘They took samples in Phlebotomy to see if my bloods are OK, but the consultant said all seems well. He agrees with the scan: I’m twelve weeks. I’ve got to go back to school.
Go back to work and I’ll see you tonight. And don’t beat yourself up about missing the appointment.’
Rosen grabbed Sarah by the hand and held onto it tightly as they walked out of the hospital into the late London morning.
——
F
IFTEEN METRES AWAY
, a man stood still and silent, watching the middle-aged couple emerge from the hospital entrance. The watcher’s blue eyes shone
at the moving picture of a handful of moments of marital happiness.
As the Rosens, still hand in hand, merged into the ebbing crowd, the watcher took out his mobile phone and made a call.
The phone rang briefly.
The ringing stopped.
A voice said, ‘Yes?’
‘That you, DC Harrison?’
‘Yes.’
‘Daniel Taylor, Greater Manchester Constabulary. You’re a reliable source of information, mate. I like that, I like that a lot. Listen, I’ve got a job for you to do.
OK?’
W
hen Rosen returned to Isaac Street Police Station, there was the atmosphere of a library in the normally noisy incident room. Detectives sat
either alone or in pairs, hunched over printouts from the Capaneusian Bible. Karen Jones waited by Rosen’s desk where a thin, pale man was seated, working at a laptop.
‘David,’ said Jones, ‘this is Steve Lewis from Scotland Yard’s e-Crime Unit.’
Lewis looked up from the laptop and, without speaking, shook Rosen’s hand, then typed in ‘www.a.acalpha.org’.
A black screen. A red book emerged from the darkness, looking old and battered. Lewis clicked ‘enter’ and the screen turned black. Points of light appeared, stars trapped in the
night sky, pinpoints swelling into whole words: books of the old testament.
‘Tell me,’ said Lewis to Jones. Rosen felt a presence behind him. Bellwood, Corrigan, Feldman and Gold had now gathered around his desk, taking it all in.
‘The devil’s side of the story. Herod’s bedtime reading. Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus. They’re all here.’
In one corner of the screen, the word ‘Continue’. He clicked it and the image turned to red sand, which blew away to reveal the name of every book of the Old Testament.
‘Take Genesis, for instance,’ suggested Jones.
‘What’s the gist?’ asked Lewis.
‘The Capaneusian Bible takes a Biblical style and infuses it with the heart and soul of a guttersnipe tabloid journalist. The Garden of Eden was a twenty-four-hour drunken orgy, an
abomination. Adam and Eve were created in God’s image for his carnal gratification. According to Capaneus, wild animals were the physical incarnations of angels, put on earth to dominate and
oppress humankind. Satan, the serpent, felt great compassion for Adam and Eve. When Eve confessed to Adam that she loved him and not God, God flew into a black rage and passed a death sentence on
Adam to be fulfilled by the lions. God, you see, loved sport. Adam went into hiding. When Satan found Eve crying in the Garden of Eden, he gathered together the friendly animals – the other
serpents, the jackals, the hyenas – and, under Satan’s guidance, they helped Adam and Eve escape from the wrath of God. The wrath of God was turned on Satan and the other animals
who’d been kind to the human beings.’