A Conspiracy of Faith (4 page)

Because of the open windows and the billowing curtains, she noticed the bottle on her first day.

What a fine little bottle, she thought to herself, and wondered at the shadow inside it as she dredged through cipher columns of malicious code. When on the third day she got to her feet feeling well satisfied, her job complete, and with a reasonable idea of what kind of virus might be anticipated next time around, she stepped across to the windowsill and picked the bottle up. It was a lot heavier than she had thought. And warm to the touch.

“What’s that inside it?” she asked the secretary next door. “Is it a letter?”

“I’ve no idea,” came the answer. “David Bell came in with it a long time ago. I think maybe it was just for fun.”

Miranda held the bottle against the light. Was that writing on the paper? It was hard to tell because of the condensation on the inside.

She turned it in her hands. “Where is this David Bell? Is he on duty?”

The secretary shook her head. “No, I’m afraid he’s not. David was killed not far out of town a couple of years back. They’d given chase to a hit-and-run driver and it all went wrong. It was a terrible thing. David was such a nice chap.”

Miranda nodded. She wasn’t really listening. She was certain now that there was writing on the paper, but that wasn’t what had caught her attention. It was what was at the bottom of the bottle.

On close inspection through the sand-blown glass, the coagulated mass looked remarkably like blood.

“Do you think I could take this bottle with me? Is there anyone here I should ask?”

“Try Emerson. He drove with David for a couple of years. I’m sure it’ll be all right.” The secretary turned toward the corridor. “Hey, Emerson,” she yelled, rattling the panes in their frames. “Come here a minute, will you?”

Miranda said hello. Emerson was a pleasant, stocky man with sad eyes.

“You want to take it with you? Be my guest. I’m certainly not wanting it myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s probably just nonsense. But just before David died, he remembered the bottle and said he’d better get it opened and do something about it. Some lad off a fishing boat handed it in to him in John O’Groats, and then the boat went down with the lad and everyone else on it a couple of years after. David felt he owed it to the lad to see what was inside. But he died before he got around to it. Not exactly a good omen, is it?”

Emerson shook his head.

“Take it away, by all means. There’s no good about that bottle.”

That same evening, Miranda sat down in her terraced house in the Edinburgh suburb of Granton and stared at the bottle. It was some fifteen centimeters tall, blue-white in color, slightly flattened, and relatively long-necked. It could have been a scent bottle, though rather on the large side. More likely it had contained eau de cologne and was probably a good age, too. She tapped a knuckle against it. The glass was solid, that much was apparent.

She smiled. “And what secrets might you conceal, dear?” she mused, taking a sip of red wine from her glass before using the corkscrew to scrape out whatever it was that sealed the neck. The lump smelled of tar, but the bottle’s time in the sea had made the exact nature of the material hard to determine.

She tried to fish out the paper inside, but it was clearly in a state of decomposition and damp to the touch. Turning the bottle in her hand, she tapped her fingers against the bottom, but the paper budged not a millimeter. This prompted her to take the bottle into the kitchen and strike it a couple of times with a meat tenderizer.

That helped. The bottle splintered into blue crystals that spilled out over the work surface like crushed ice.

She stared at the piece of paper that lay on the chopping board and frowned. Her gaze passed over the shattered glass and she took a deep breath.

Maybe it hadn’t been the best of ideas after all.

“Yes,” her colleague Douglas in Forensics confirmed. “It’s blood all right. No doubt about it. Well done. The way the blood and the condensation have been absorbed into the paper is quite characteristic. Especially here, where the signature’s completely obliterated. The color of it, and the pattern of absorption. Aye, it’s all typical.”

He unfolded the paper using tweezers and bathed it in blue light. Traces of blood all over, diffusely iridescent in every letter.

“It’s written in blood?”

“Most certainly.”

“And you agree with me that the heading is an appeal for help? It sounds like it, at least.”

“Aye, I reckon so,” Douglas replied. “But I doubt we’ll be able to salvage much more than the heading. It’s quite damaged, that letter. Besides, it might be very old. The thing to do now is to make sure it’s properly treated
and conserved, and then maybe we’ll have a stab at dating it. And of course we’ll need to have a linguistics expert take a look at it. Hopefully, they’ll be able to tell us what language that is.”

Miranda nodded. She had her own idea about that.

Icelandic.

“Health and Safety are
here, Carl.” Rose was standing in the doorway, looking like she wasn’t going to budge. Maybe she was hoping to see a fight.

A small man in a well-pressed suit introduced himself as John Studsgaard. Small, and with an air of authority. Apart from the flat brown briefcase under his arm he seemed harmless enough. A pleasant smile and his hand outstretched. However, it was an impression that evaporated the moment he opened his mouth.

“There’s a report of asbestos having been found in the corridor here and in the crawl space on the last inspection. We’ll need to inspect the insulation so the area can be made safe for use.”

Carl peered up at the ceiling. One bloody pipe. The only one in the entire basement. Bollocks.

“I see you’ve got offices here,” the suit went on. “Would that be in accordance with official occupation and fire regulations for the building?” He was just about to unzip his briefcase, obviously in possession of a stack of documents that would provide him with the answer to his question.

“Offices? What offices?” said Carl. “You mean the archive briefing space here?”

“Archive briefing space?” The man looked lost for a second, but then the bureaucrat took charge. “I’m not entirely familiar with the term, but it seems clear to me that a lot of what I would call regular work-related activity is conducted here during the course of a day.”

“You mean the coffeemaker? We can put it somewhere else if you want.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s more the whole setup. Desks, bulletin boards, shelving, coat hooks, archives, office supplies, photocopiers.”

“Oh, right, I’m with you now! Listen, do you know how many stairs there are up to the third floor from here?”

“No.”

“OK, then you probably don’t know either that we’re short-staffed and that it’d take up most of the day if we had to shoot up and down those stairs every time we needed to photocopy something for the archive. Perhaps you’d prefer to have killers running around on the loose than for us to be able to do our jobs properly?”

Studsgaard was about to protest, but Carl raised a hand and stopped him. “Where is this asbestos, exactly?”

The man frowned. “This isn’t about where or how. We have an incidence of asbestos contamination. Asbestos is a carcinogen. It’s not something you wipe up with a floor cloth.”

“Were you here when the inspection took place, Rose?” Carl inquired.

She pointed off down the corridor. “They found some dust along there somewhere.”

“ASSAD!” Carl yelled, so loud the man took a step backward. “Come on, Rose, show me,” he said as Assad popped into view.

“You too, Assad. Bring your bucket, a cloth, and those nice green gloves of yours. Job for you.”

They walked the fifteen steps along the corridor and then Rose pointed to some white, powdery substance on the floor between her black boots. “There!” she exclaimed.

The man from Health and Safety protested and endeavored to explain that what they were clearly intending to do was quite inadequate. That the source would be left untouched, and that common sense and all the regulations dictated that contamination should be removed in accordance with existing precepts.

Carl ignored him. “Once you’ve wiped it up, Assad, I want you to get
on the phone and call a joiner. We need a partition wall to separate Health and Safety’s contaminated zone from our briefing space. Don’t want to be breathing all that crap into our lungs, do we, now?”

Assad shook his head deliberately. “What space was that you said, Carl? Briefing space…?”

“Just wipe the floor, Assad. The man’s busy.”

The official flashed Carl a hostile look. “You’ll be hearing from us,” was the last thing he said as he huffed off down the corridor, briefcase clutched tight against his rib cage.

Hearing from them! Carl didn’t doubt it for a minute.

“Tell me now, Assad, what all my case files are doing up there on the wall,” said Carl. “I hope for your sake they’re copies.”

“Copies? If you prefer copies, Carl, I can take them down again. I can get you all the copies you want, no problem.”

Carl swallowed. “Are you telling me to my face that these are the original documents you’ve hung up to dry?”

“Look at my system, Carl. Tell me, by all means, if you do not find it so fantastic. That would be all right. I won’t get mad.”

Carl recoiled. “Mad?” he repeated. He’d been away a fortnight and his staff had gone off their heads from inhaling asbestos.

“Take a look, Carl.” With an expression of glee, Assad held out two balls of string.

“Well done, Assad. You’ve pilfered some string. Blue string and red string. Excellent. In nine months you can gift wrap your Christmas presents.”

Assad slapped him on the back. “Ha, ha, Carl. Very good. Now you are your old self again.”

Carl shook his head. It irked him to think that his retirement depended on him reaching an age that was still so far off.

“But look.” Assad drew off a length of blue string, then tore off a piece of adhesive tape, affixing one end of the string to a case dating back to the
sixties. Then he pulled the string across a number of other cases, snipped it with a pair of scissors, and attached the other end to a case from the eighties. “Clever, don’t you think?”

Carl put his hands behind his neck as if to keep his head in place. “A magnificent work of art, Assad. Andy Warhol would be proud.”

“Andy who?”

“What is it exactly you’re doing, Assad? Are you trying to suggest a connection between those two cases?”

“Just imagine if they actually were connected, then we would be able to see it.” He indicated his blue string. “Right here! Blue string!” He snapped his fingers. “It means we think the cases might have something in common.”

Carl inhaled deeply. “Aha! Let me guess what the red string’s for.”

“Yes, exactly! That is for when we know the cases really
are
connected. A good system, don’t you think?”

Carl took in more air. “Yes, Assad. The only thing wrong with it is that none of the cases have anything at all in common. As such, it would be so much better for them to be in a pile on my desk so that we might peruse them at our leisure. Would that be OK with you?” It wasn’t a question, but an answer came anyway.