Authors: Simon Toyne
The Basilica Ferrumvia was the largest building in Ruin not belonging to the Church. It had risen piece by piece in the mid-nineteenth century like a red beacon of hope and modern progress from the mediaeval slums to the south of the Lost Quarter. Despite its ecclesiastical-sounding name, however, the only thing worshipped inside it was commerce. The ‘Church of the Iron Road’ was Ruin’s main train station.
By the time Gabriel pulled up outside the gothic façade, rush hour was well underway. He brought the lightweight trail bike to a stop under the vast glass and wrought-iron awning that stretched from the front of the building and eased it into a space next to a line of scooters. He kicked out the foot-rest, killed the engine and headed briskly into the station like any other commuter with a train to catch.
He walked quickly through the cacophonous central hall and descended into the muted silence of the left-luggage office dug deep into the bedrock beneath Platform 16.
Locker 68 stood in the furthest corner of the room, directly below one of the six closed-circuit cameras that watched the room. The position of the camera meant that, although Gabriel’s face was visible to anyone monitoring the feeds, the contents of the locker were not. He punched in a five-digit code and opened the door.
Inside was another black canvas bag, identical in size and make to the one over his shoulder. He unzipped it and pulled out a black quilted jacket and two fully loaded ammunition clips. He laid the clips on the floor of the locker, pulled out his SIG, carefully unscrewed the silencer and dropped it into the open bag. Silence was for night time. Any shooting during the day needed to be loud enough to scare away anyone who shouldn’t be there. He didn’t want innocent bystanders getting hurt. In the army it was called collateral damage. In the city it was called murder.
He looked round, slipped the bag from his shoulder and shrugged off his jacket, replacing it with the quilted one. The loaded clips went into the pocket. The SIG went back into the pancake shoulder holster, less bulky without the silencer. He picked up the bag, stashed it in the locker then unzipped it and pulled out Liv’s hold-all. He hesitated, his innate courtesy preventing him from prying into a woman’s personal property, then opened it anyway.
He found clothes, toiletries, a phone charger, all the things you’d stuff in a bag if you were heading someplace in a hurry. There was also a small laptop in a case, a wallet, credit cards, a press ID card and a Starbucks loyalty card that was nearly full. A side pocket produced a passport, a set of house keys and a paper 1-Hour Foto wallet. Inside were a dozen or so glossy prints of Liv and a young man on a daytrip to New York. She was a few years younger in the photos than the girl he had met at the airport – early twenties maybe. The young man was clearly her brother. He had the same dark blonde hair, the same softly rounded, attractive face – handsome in him, pretty in her – the same bright green eyes shone with the joy of shared laughter from both faces.
The last image dated the trip to pre-2001. The young man stood alone between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, his arms pushing outward, his face twisted in a caricature of extreme effort. With his long hair and hint of a beard he looked like Samson in the temple of the Philistines. It was an ominous image, laden with tragedy, not only because of what happened to the towers, but because the image of the happy young man with his arms outstretched aped the pose he would ultimately take in the final hours before he fell.
Gabriel slid the photos back into the wallet. His practical instinct was to leave the bag in the locker, but he slung it over his shoulder, slammed the door and headed to the exit. Keeping it close would act as a talisman for him, a good luck charm, a lens through which to focus his determination and purpose so that when he found the girl and got her to safety he could give it back to her.
In his mind her security had become his personal mission. He couldn’t say exactly why or when he had decided that this was so. Maybe when he’d watched her scampering across the rain-slicked car park, fuelled by a fear partly caused by him. Maybe even earlier – when he’d first seen her startling green eyes searching for the truth in his own. He could take the fear away from her at least, if he got the chance.
He emerged from the gloom of the left-luggage office back into the bright glare of the main concourse. The arched glass ceiling, a hundred feet high at its apex, seemed to gather every sound and reflect it back. It was so loud that he felt rather than heard his phone ringing in his pocket.
‘The girl’s been taken to the Central District,’ Kathryn said. ‘She’s in an interview room on the fourth floor giving a statement about what happened last night.’
‘How old’s the information?’
‘Just got it. But we think the person who gave it to us is also feeding the Sancti.’
It made sense. It also meant the people who’d tried to snatch Liv the previous night would be close by, biding their time until they got another chance.
‘I’ll call you back,’ he said, and hung up.
He slipped on his helmet as he arrived at the bike and contemplated his next move. He figured she was safe so long as she was in the interview room – but she wouldn’t stay there forever and the Central District building was vast. Finding her inside it without drawing attention to himself would be almost impossible. He kick-started the engine and glanced across at a newsstand selling the morning edition of the local paper. A new picture of the monk filled the front page, closer this time, obviously taken on a very long lens. The headline above it read THE FALL OF MAN.
He dropped the bike in gear and eased it into the slow-moving morning traffic.
He knew exactly where she’d be going next.
Arkadian pushed through the large glass door of the Central District building and held it open. Liv emerged, squinting in the bright morning sun. A small group of uniformed cops and white-collar admin workers congregated around an ashtray rising from the pavement, a shrine to their shared addiction. Liv headed over to join the service.
‘Don’t suppose I could steal one of those?’ she asked someone in a white shirt and blue tie. The admin guys were usually a softer touch than the uniforms. He looked up and recoiled slightly at her bedraggled appearance.
‘It’s OK, she’s with me,’ Arkadian said.
He produced a soft pack of Marlboro Lights.
‘Thanks,’ Liv said, plucking one and tapping it on the back of her hand. ‘’Preciate it.’
The admin guy held out a light and Liv dipped her head to meet it. She sucked in the dry smoke, hungry for the nicotine hit. It tasted just as bad as the ones she’d had in the interview room. She shot the admin guy a smile anyway and turned to follow Arkadian down the street.
‘So when was the last time you saw your brother?’ Arkadian asked as she caught up.
Liv took another drag of the cigarette, hoping the familiar bliss would descend upon her soon.
‘Eight years ago,’ she said, blowing out the acrid smoke. ‘Right before he vanished.’
‘Any idea why he took off?’
Liv screwed up her face at the aftertaste. What was it with these foreign smokes? They all tasted like burnt tyres. ‘Long story.’
‘Well then, let’s walk slowly. The morgue’s only a couple of streets away.’
Liv took one more cautious drag on the cigarette then dropped it down a storm drain as discreetly as she could manage, hoping the nice man who’d given it to her wasn’t watching. ‘I suppose it started back when Dad died. I don’t know how much you know about it . . .’
Arkadian thought back to the file he’d compiled on the dead monk’s past and the article outlining the tragic car accident in the frozen ravine. ‘I know the details.’
‘Did you know my brother held himself totally responsible? “Survivor Syndrome”, that’s what the doctors called it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been the cause of everything and so didn’t deserve to be still living. He spent a long time in therapy, trying to come to terms with it. In the end he turned to religion instead. I suppose it happens a lot. You start looking for answers. If you can’t find them in the here and now, you look elsewhere.’
She replayed the events of eight years ago in her mind: her trip to West Virginia; the sound of the crickets on Nurse Kintner’s porch as she told Liv what she knew; the clarity and sense it had all made to her; then the darkness that quickly clouded it again when she shared her discoveries with Samuel. ‘I should never have told him.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Arkadian said. ‘When Samuel blamed himself for your father’s death, did you feel the same way?’
‘No.’
‘And did you tell him it wasn’t his fault?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, I’m telling you now: Samuel’s death wasn’t your fault. Whatever you said to him, whatever you think you did to drive him away, he was already on his own path. There was nothing you could have done, one way or another, to change it.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because if he’d harboured some lasting grudge against you, or held you responsible for any of it, why would he go to such great lengths to make sure we found you?’
Liv shrugged. ‘Maybe to punish me.’
Arkadian shook his head. ‘But that’s not the way it works. You must have reported on kidnapping cases, abductions, missing persons.’
‘Some.’
‘And what’s the worst thing about them? For the relatives, I mean.’
Liv thought of the people she’d interviewed: the haunted looks; the constant speculation on all the things that may have happened; the never-ending worry and uncertainty. She thought of the demons that she’d lived with ever since Samuel had vanished. ‘The worst thing is not knowing.’
‘Exactly. But you
know
what happened to Samuel because he made sure of it. He wasn’t punishing you by doing that. He was setting you free.’
The whoop of a siren startled them both as a large fire truck barged through the traffic and turned into the next street. Arkadian watched it disappear then broke into a sprint. Liv watched in surprise for a moment then hurried after him. She caught up as he rounded the corner.
Groups of people in lab coats and shirtsleeves filled the street, their hands shoved into trouser pockets, their shoulders hunched against the cold. The truck that had driven past them pulled up next to another already parked in front of what looked like a huge mausoleum. Fire marshals in high-visibility jackets checked names on a piece of paper.
Arkadian strode towards the nearest of them, scanning the faces in the crowd and punching a number into his phone. ‘Have you seen Dr Reis?’
The marshal checked his list. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
In his ear, Reis’s recorded voice asked him to leave a message. Arkadian snapped the phone shut and walked over to two firefighters emerging from the entrance. ‘What’s up?’ He flashed his badge. He could smell smoke coming off them.
‘Nothing,’ the larger man said, pulling off his helmet and wiping sweat from his eyebrows. ‘Alarm tripped in a hallway; a fire in a bin in one of the toilets.’
‘Deliberate?’
‘Oh yeah.’
Arkadian frowned. ‘Can I go in?’
The fire-fighter turned his head and spoke into a microphone on his lapel. ‘Charlie Four, you found anything else?’
A burst of static was followed by a metallic voice. ‘Negative. We’re on our way out.’
‘Be my guest,’ he said.
Arkadian moved across the pavement and up the steps. Liv followed, sticking close behind, looking resolutely ahead and frowning slightly in the hope that it would lend her a sense of professional seriousness and make the fireman think she was Arkadian’s partner. The fireman watched her pass, looking instead at her grimy clothes and hair. He opened his mouth to say something but a squawk on his radio distracted him long enough for Liv to bound up the steps and disappear into the building.
She found herself in a large atrium with several doors leading off it, a deserted reception area in front of her and a pair of lift doors to the left. Arkadian punched the buttons and stood waiting for a moment, then turned abruptly through a set of double doors. Liv followed him into a stairwell which echoed with the sound of his footsteps. She matched hers with his, all the way to the sub-basement, so he wouldn’t hear her and tell her to go back outside.
Arkadian emerged from the stairwell and into the corridor. He was immediately struck by how quiet it was. A lab coat lay discarded on the floor, knocked from its hook by someone in the rush to get out. Further down the hallway he could see the door to Reis’s office. It was open. He punched the redial button on his phone and stalked down the hallway towards it.
He glanced inside and saw Reis’s mobile skittering across the abandoned desk. It clinked against a black mug, half-full of milky coffee, steam still rising from its pale surface. Arkadian snapped his phone shut. Heard the silence flooding back. Heard a noise in the corridor behind him. Spun round, his hand reaching for the gun in his shoulder holster.
Liv saw Arkadian’s hand dart into his jacket then annoyance flash across his face as he realized it was her. She glanced past his shoulder into the empty office, desperately wanting to know what was going on, but also knowing this was not the time to ask questions.
Arkadian used the sleeve of his jacket to pull the door closed and the sound of her heartbeat quickened in her ears. She’d been around enough investigations to recognize the significance of this move. He was treating the place as a crime scene.
The door clicked shut and Arkadian turned to look at her again.
‘Stay here,’ he said, heading towards another set of doors at the far end of the corridor. ‘Don’t touch anything.’
He shoulder-barged his way through. Liv scampered after him, slipping through the gap before they had time to swing shut, and found herself in a narrow, featureless room.
It was just a few degrees above freezing, and the smell of disinfectant and something sweet and faintly nauseating hung in the air. One wall was filled with a grid of large filing drawers – about thirty in all. Liv shuddered in the sudden chill and the knowledge of what they contained.
A trolley had been abandoned in the centre of the room. A plastic sheet was draped across the lower half of it, bunched up like bedclothes. It looked as though the occupant had got up when the fire alarm sounded and left the building along with everyone else. Arkadian swerved round it and came to a halt by a drawer at the far end of the room, three rows in and two up, which had a number eight stencilled above a window containing a handwritten note trapped behind a sheet of clear plastic. Liv couldn’t quite read it from where she stood, but she knew what it said.
Arkadian grabbed the handle with the sleeve of his jacket. As it slid open Liv heard a sound behind her. She spun round. A pale, skinny man hovered on the threshold. He held a half-eaten bagel in one hand and pushed a curtain of black hair from his face with the other.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Arkadian yelled.
Reis leaned to one side and looked past Liv. ‘Missed breakfast,’ he said, indicating the bagel. Then his eyes dropped and registered confusion.
Liv followed his gaze, bracing herself. But the body of her dead brother was nowhere to be seen. The drawer was empty.