Bristol House (48 page)

And so it was until, in my sixty-sixth year and on a Thursday walk, I stumbled over a broken branch and fell and broke my neck and came here to the Waiting Place.

Giacomo the Lombard was here. I saw him for a moment only, his face suffused with glory. I stretched out my hand, but he did not see me and walked toward the effulgent light that sometimes glows in the distance and then disappeared. I am aware of many others, though most I cannot see. I asked after Rebecca and learned she had already come and gone. “To the light?” I inquired.

“Ah yes, to the light.”

I asked then after Dom Hilary and the others who were in their lifetimes called the Speckled Egg, but my guide turned away and did not answer.

There are a deal of unanswered questions here. Apart from that glow which sometimes appears but always hurts my eyes, causing me to turn away, it is a place shrouded with many dark clouds—the cumulative fog of our ungoodness, I am told. But as I have explained, there is here nothing of time as we know it on the other side of the divide between death and life. It is always now in the Waiting Place. Despite that, it is cold and dark, and a place of great and sorrowful deprivation, where I and others like me strive to make reparation so we may cross to the other side where bliss is assured.

Now I have told my story. What next I ask?

I am told I must break through and right the gravest of my wrongs. The Agnus Dei will help me, and the woman has been made ready, harrowed by the sharp teeth of the prelude to true life that in our ignorance we call living.

I stretch out my hand . . .

•

38

She’d made the right call. Number eight Bristol House was unlocked. The door to the flat opened as soon as Annie turned the knob. She hadn’t turned off the radios either. It was nearly four in the morning, but the relentlessly informative BBC talked on. At the moment they were extolling the virtues of regular exercise, whatever your age. “Even a brisk walk of ten minutes a day can make an enormous difference if . . .”

The remote lay in its customary place on the hall table. She snatched it up but allowed the radios to continue to play. She would turn them off last thing, after she put out the lights.

She started from the back bedroom. She switched on the lamp and stood for a moment looking around. “If you’re here,” she said aloud, “I hope I’ve done what you want. I mean about finding the Speckled Egg. I’ll do my best to convince the MI6 people to stop Weinraub. I promise.”

She turned off the lamp and in the darkness stepped into the short hall. A sudden glow stopped her. And a low melodic sound; not so much chant as the prelude to chant. As if a long intake of breath. She turned slowly back to the room, already pretty much sure what she would see.

The ghost however was not there. The source of the light was the small package she had carefully wrapped in lavender-colored acid-free paper.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi . . .
Not so much chant as an echo of a chant she’d heard countless times. The Latin phrases spoken or sung at every Mass hovered in her mind. Words repeated day after day, week after week. Every Mass everywhere.
Repeated somewhere every minute of the day and night.
At least that’s what she’d once been told. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world . . .
miserere nobis.
Have mercy on us.

Annie half whispered, half sang the words. “
Agnus Dei . . .
” The glow intensified and she was surrounded by warmth. She stretched out her hand. “What do you want me to do?” Even as she spoke, she knew. She took the small parcel from the top of the chest and tucked it in her bra, next to her heart. That was wanton disregard for the physical integrity of an ancient artifact and violated every rule of her professional world. Nonetheless it felt exactly right.

She experienced no particular heat, only that of her own body and also a sense of satisfaction. Or perhaps, after the sadness of Maggie’s loss and Geoff’s bereavement, a better word was
comfort
.

***

There was no mess to clean up in the kitchen—they hadn’t stayed long enough to make one. Annie took a bottle of Bitter Lemon from the refrigerator, unscrewed the top, and took a drink; then she pulled the cord of the overhead light in the kitchen and went into the dining room. They’d spent no time there either. It was pristine. She flipped the switch on her way out. That left only her bedroom to deal with. Then she could go to Geoff’s.

God, he must be feeling like shit. Would he take any comfort from Rabbi Hazan’s notion of the river? In terms of death, what exactly did it mean? Had Maggie gone to some other reach, as Hazan had called it, and was it a difficult journey? Maybe it was Maggie speaking to her from wherever she was, saying Annie should take the old Agnus Dei that had been so long in Maggie’s apparently unwitting possession. Maybe they were supposed to put the thing back in the mezuzah, remove the
klaf
Rabbi Cohen had put in its place. She’d have to talk to Geoff about that.

Annie switched off the bedroom lights.

Only those in the hall remained to be dealt with, and of course the radios. A woman was now discussing a museum exhibit, illustrations of the old Pale of Calais.

She took another swig of her soda, screwed the top back on, and wedged the bottle into the pocket of her jeans so both hands were free. She would first open the front door, then simultaneously turn off the hall lights and the radios, using one hand for each task. It was a practiced routine. The final requirement was to stretch out her arm and put the remote back on the table.

Done.

The lights in the outside corridor operated on time switches, one beside each flat. The stairwell lights, however, were on permanently. The reflected light they cast was enough for Annie to see to lock the door. She fitted the key into the first lock and turned it.

Coming here had been a good thing. Responsible. And the whole business had taken only a few minutes.

She found the special key that operated the second lock, then inserted and turned it. One problem remained. Even before this detour, she’d been late enough that maybe the spooks had given up and left Orde Hall Street. She didn’t know the number to call to get them back. She’d have to get hold of Geoff and—

Footsteps.

Measured and deliberate and mounting one step at a time. Annie held her breath and listened. The footsteps grew louder.

Breathe, she told herself. This is an apartment building. Someone is coming home.

Or maybe someone with a quail egg wanted to climb up a couple of flights and pay her a visit.

She pressed her hand over her heart, over the ancient Agnus Dei.
Protects from malign influences and even sudden death.

The corridor was without any architectural features, no nooks or crannies, just closed doors. There was nowhere to hide. Why should she need to hide? Someone who lived here was returning. That was a perfectly ordinary—

The footsteps stopped.

Annie drew another long breath and held it, straining to hear whoever it was unlocking a door on the floor below. She began counting the seconds. When she got to six, the footsteps resumed. They were still climbing. Really close now.

The stairs had become a trap. She could go back into the flat. But how long would it take to undo both locks? And what if whoever it was somehow had duplicate keys?

She ran toward the elevator. It was on her floor. She could see the cab through the small window in the outside door. Annie ran to it, yanked it open, and pushed aside the accordion grill. It opened with a loud clang. The footsteps stopped.

Annie flung herself into the elevator and pulled the outside door closed behind her, cursing the fact that it was heavy and had one of those air-brake systems that prevented it from shutting quickly. Finally it clicked into place. She shoved the grill closed and punched the button marked “Ground.”

Nothing happened.

Annie banged every button she could see, over and over. The elevator did not move. The mechanism was old and creaky and didn’t always work the way it should. She opened the grill a few inches, then slammed it shut a second time. The ancient elevator began a slow descent.

She passed the floor below. In the elevator she could hear nothing and had no idea if whoever it was had turned around and started down the stairs. You could go down a lot faster than you could go up. Please, God, let her get to the ground floor before the footsteps did. If she could get out of the building and onto the street, she’d be fine. Southampton Row was never entirely empty. There was bound to be—

The elevator slid past the entrance lobby and continued down.

***

She was in a basement of sorts. Lit fairly well. Through the window in the elevator door, Annie could see a small section of the main staircase. It made a sharp turn so she couldn’t actually see where it went, but it had to rise to the lobby because there was nowhere else for it to go. Running up those stairs would be faster than using the damned elevator. She pushed open both doors and stepped into a narrower and shorter version of the corridors on the floors above. A door on her right looked as if it led to another flat. Probably a super. She could—

She heard the footsteps starting down the stairs. Not hurrying—slow and deliberate, as they’d been right along. Because her pursuer knew exactly where to find her and knew she was trapped.

Jesus God Almighty . . .
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
 . . . She banged on the maybe-super’s door. Nothing happened, and no one came. There was another door on the left. Annie hurled herself at it. The door gave way, and she flung herself forward and into complete darkness.

The door closed behind her, and Annie pressed against it, trying to catch her breath, feeling behind her for some kind of a lock or bolt. There was none. Against the small of her back, she thought she felt the knob start to turn. She knew tears were running down her cheeks, but they were not really connected to her. That was some other Annie, a woman who was about to give way to terror and despair. The real Annie, the one who had clawed her way out of a bottle, was not going to be trapped by some lunatic with a quail egg in his pocket.

“Not this time, you son of a bitch.”

The whispered words disappeared in the darkness. She put out a tentative foot. Stairs. Annie went down. When the stairs came to an end, she stretched out both arms as wide as she could. She was in a narrow space. A corridor of some sort. Her right hand touched a stone wall, her left rough wood. Planks maybe. She moved forward, keeping her fingertips in contact with both the stone and the boards. After a few steps, her left hand touched a padlock. Then more of the unfinished wood and another padlock. Storage bins, she realized, probably assigned by flat; places in a subbasement where the residents of Bristol House could keep things they didn’t need every day. Probably built originally to store coal for the fireplaces. Before pea-soup fogs ushered in the law that made everyone switch to inefficient smokeless coal and eventually install central heating, individual coal cellars had been a prized amenity in London buildings.

Figuring that out changed nothing, but it gave her courage. She walked a little faster, always listening for the opening of the door at the top of the stairs behind her. She heard nothing. And her eyes were adjusting to the dark, picking out a faint glimmer of light ahead. If she could—

Her left hand lost contact with the wall of wood. A few steps more, and the stone wall ran out as well. She was facing a junction of some sort, the entrance to a corridor that ran horizontal to the aisle in front of the storage bins. Annie stood still, trying to sense the building around her, using all her skills to mentally retrace the directions she’d come and the logic of the construction. Best guess, she was under Southampton Row looking west toward the museum, about to step into a north-south-running passage. Which at one time must have provided access for delivering coal, so it wouldn’t be trucked through the public lobby. Meaning that somewhere this below-street-level passage was connected to the outside world.

Annie squinted to her left. In the direction, she thought, of Theobald’s Road. She was pretty sure the faint light she was seeing came from there, but a good ways distant. It seemed that what she now thought of as the coal passage didn’t serve only Bristol House. It extended along the neighboring buildings all the way to the corner. At that point there had to be a gate of some sort, probably opening into an alley. She stood still long enough to listen for the sound of anyone following her, heard nothing, and set off.

She was walking on uneven cobbles, which confirmed her idea about the age and purpose of the original construction. Thank God she had on sneakers. Still, for the first minute she went gingerly, always continuing to listen for sounds of pursuit. Nothing. How come? There were only two doors on the basement level and one was locked. Why had whoever was after her given up?

Maybe because there was only one way out of where she was, and her pursuer knew where she’d end up. Even so, she’d rather face whoever it was in an above-ground-level alley. Somewhere she could shout and be heard. And if she got there first, maybe she could get out of the alley and onto the street before there was any kind of confrontation. Annie broke into a trot. The sneakers helped to keep her footing on the treacherous cobbles, but a couple of times she stumbled and thought of what could happen if she tripped, maybe broke something. Don’t think about that, Annie. Run.

The dark was becoming more gray than black, and the air felt different, as if she were outside. She could make out stone walls to either side. Lots of moss and damp patches. No sun here ever. Run, Annie. She saw a gate up ahead, and a few stairs leading up to it. Her heart was pounding. The adrenaline drench had revved her up, undermined her training. She had to draw deep gasping breaths to keep herself going. Run, Annie. Run.