The Borgia Ring (9 page)

‘Who else did Father Bellarmino say you could trust?’ he went on.

‘A man named Gappair.’

‘Gappair?’ he laughed. Sebastian glanced at me as I sank down in my seat again.

‘Gappair?’ He repeated. ‘Hah! An anagram, my boy … for Agrippa.’

I sensed Sebastian sag with relief in his chair and, for my part, suddenly felt a huge weight lifted from my shoulders.

The old man rose to his feet and approached us. ‘Now, perhaps we should stop wasting precious time,’ he said. ‘You need to learn what you must do with this.’ And he held out the ring which Roberto Bellarmino had placed in our safekeeping.

Stepney, Sunday 5 June, lunchtime

La Dolce Vita, an Italian restaurant on Mile End Road, was every bit the cliché its name implied. Owned by Giovanni Contadino, a former sales executive from Milan who had moved to London over a decade earlier, it was decorated with heavily patterned wallpaper and an equally strident carpet. A huge but cheap-looking chandelier hung from the centre of the ceiling, casting a surprisingly pallid light. But the food was good and the service friendly.

On this oppressively hot afternoon, all the windows of the restaurant had been flung open and a couple of portable electric fans did their best to quell the stifling heat. A storm was brewing.

By 12.45, the staff of Rainer and Partner had gathered at the bar. It was their annual get together, and, in ebullient mood, the owner of the company, Max Rainer, was buying everyone drinks. Suddenly, the storm broke. Rain came down in great torrents. The restaurant staff rushed around, slamming shut the windows.

Tim Middleton was fifteen minutes late. He pulled into the car park in his red MG, slammed shut the car door, opened an over-sized Ralph Lauren umbrella and dashed through the rain to the restaurant. He looked dapper in a beautifully tailored Ozwald Boateng suit, taupe calfskin loafers and a
floral-patterned shirt. He was about to open the door when he noticed a young couple standing in the passageway leading to the dining-room. She was slim with brown, wavy hair. Her white 1950s-style dress clung to her, accentuating large breasts and a narrow waist. Her partner was a tall man, at least twenty years her senior. He was greying at the temples and heavy-jowled. The young woman had her arm linked with his. Middleton stopped abruptly and was about to turn on his heel when the woman spotted him.

‘Hello, Tim,’ she said, and pressed closer to her partner.

‘Sophie,’ he replied evenly.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then Middleton said, ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me?’

Sophie blocked his way by moving almost imperceptibly to her left. Middleton gave her a contemptuous look.

‘Always were on a hair trigger, weren’t you, Tim?’

The man at Sophie’s side laughed. ‘Ah,
that
Tim,’ he said.

Middleton ignored him.

‘You haven’t met Marcus, have you?’ Sophie said quickly. Her eyes sparkled, darting between the two men.

Middleton gave Marcus the briefest of nods. ‘Charmed. Running late. Must dash.’

‘Pathetic prick,’ Sophie said, shaking her head.

He glared at her. ‘As classy as ever, Soph.’

Marcus took a step towards him, but Sophie held him back. Middleton smirked and gave them a little wave, pulled his jacket down at the front and headed towards the Rainer and Partner table. A few of the firm’s staff had already taken their seats and had been watching the scene with silent interest. Middleton did his best to ignore Giovanni Contadino, who had also witnessed the exchange. The restaurateur led Sophie and Marcus to a small private area along a narrow corridor away from the main dining-room.
With strained bonhomie, Middleton dived into telling one of the secretaries a joke.

By two o’clock, most of the party were merry from copious amounts of Frascati, their hunger satisfied with some of the best pizza, gnocchi, linguine and garlic bread in London.

Since he’d become a partner four years earlier, tradition had it that at these annual lunches Tim Middleton would give a short speech, recalling in humorous fashion the highs and lows of the year, gently mocking their boss, Max Rainer, and embarrassing the junior staff. Feeling slightly the worse for wear after drinking more than his share of Frascati as well as three whiskies before leaving his flat, Tim Middleton rose to his feet and swept a hand through his long, light brown hair. Max Rainer offered a brief, jokey introduction, patted Middleton on the back and returned to his seat.

‘It’s always a pleasure,’ he began, ‘to report on the ever-upward path of Rainer and Partner. And, indeed, I have to be honest and say that much of this has been due to the aforementioned “Partner”.’ He paused for a moment, looking round at the strained smiles of his colleagues. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘that upward mobility has been in spite of certain … shall we say … gaffes committed during the past twelve …’ He stopped and closed his eyes for a moment, swaying gently on the spot.

‘Someone’s overdone it,’ whispered one of the junior architects to a secretary on his left. She giggled. Middleton’s eyes snapped open and he peered around the table, clearly struggling to focus. As discreetly as he could, he loosened his tie. It bought him a moment in which to gather his thoughts.

A low roll of thunder rumbled overhead and lightning crackled across the sky, so close by it was as though a flash bulb had gone off at the table.

‘Gaffe number one,’ continued Middleton, his words slightly slurred. ‘Gaffo numero uno must go to …’ He stopped again, and those who had not averted their gaze through embarrassment noticed a rivulet of sweat running down his temple. His eyes looked bloodshot suddenly. Wincing, he opened his mouth and began to form a word but nothing came out. Instead, his jaws opened and closed slightly as though controlled by concealed wires. He doubled up and grabbed at his stomach. Rocking on his heels, he clutched at the table to steady himself. One of the company’s draughtsmen, sitting to Middleton’s right, jumped up and put a hand out in an effort to stop his boss from falling.

Middleton took a step back. He was staring at the gathering, an expression of horror on his face. He clutched his throat, his eyes bulging. White foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. He looked down for a moment, swaying as though his sight had gone, and when he brought his head up again they could all see that his left eye had become a red disc. A rivulet of blood ran from it down his cheek. He roared and a stream of vomit and blood gushed from his mouth. It spattered the tablecloth and caught two of his colleagues across the face as they recoiled in horror.

Middleton crashed down on the table, his face connecting with a clutch of wine bottles and glasses, knocking them into laps and on to the floor. One of the women screamed and leapt up. The architect slid backwards, away from the table. As he fell, more blood and vomit gushed from his mouth.

Max Rainer dashed over to him. Middleton had stopped moving. One eye stared sightlessly at the ceiling; the other was a uniform scarlet. Rainer placed two fingers to his partner’s neck then turned to the others as they clustered around, a look of disbelief on his face.

Pendragon’s worldly goods had been brought down from Oxford the day before and stored overnight by a removals firm. At the storage depot, it took him only twenty minutes to load the lot into his car. The hard bit was getting the stuff up to his third-floor flat. After six trips up four flights of stairs, he was exhausted. Waiting for the kettle to boil, he considered the collection of boxes and a solitary bin-liner filled with clothes, and thought, not for the first time, how little he had to show for a double first from Oxford and a quarter of a century on the force.

He poured boiling water on to a teabag and added a dribble of milk, stirred the dark brown liquid and sat down in one of the armchairs that had come with the flat. Lifting the cup to his lips, he looked around the over-lit room. The walls were covered with lining paper and had been painted caramel. It wasn’t a bad colour, he thought, just worn out, a relic from the 70s. The carpet was new, but too heavily patterned for his taste. The curtains … well, they would have to go. Just as soon as he had time to get the place straight.

He walked over to the large bay window and looked out on to the street, a small turning off Stepney Way. The sky had darkened overhead. Storm clouds heavy with rain were bunching together ominously. Although still early-afternoon, it already looked like dusk. Just within sight at the end of the street was a mosque. On the opposite corner stood a twenty-
four-hour petrol station lit up in red and blue. It looked like some exotic marine creature dredged up from the Mariana Trench.

Pendragon’s building was scruffy and contained half a dozen flats, but he could see that three or four of the houses in the street had been gentrified, smartened up to become desirable homes for As and Bs. There were worse places to live, he supposed.

On the way back to the armchair, he pulled over a box and slowly removed its contents. A stack of long-playing albums: John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea. A box set of Miles Davis sessions from the late-50s. Next to this was a sturdy metal container. Inside lay his most treasured possessions: an Audio Technica turntable, Guarneri Homage speakers and a 1970s Pioneer amp, each lovingly encased in bubble wrap. He lifted them gently from the crate and placed the amp and turntable on a low plastic table, hooked up the mains and the leads to the speakers and switched them on. Turning to the box of vinyl, he pulled out
A Love Supreme
, cleaned it carefully with a special cloth kept in a small plastic box in the album case, slipped it over the spindle of the turntable and moved the arm into position. The sound of immortal sax spilled from the speakers.

Coltrane always put him in an introspective mood, and he wasn’t convinced this was a good thing. All the introspection in the world could do nothing to change the past and nor could it shed any light on his current problems. He turned back to the box and pulled out another album, a Stan Getz Sextet classic from 1958. Inside the clear plastic protective sleeve was the note his son, Simon, had put there just a few days earlier when he gave the album to his father as a going-away present: ‘Dad, one of your favourites, I know. Enjoy, and visit soon.’

Simon was at Oxford University. A child prodigy, he had obtained his mathematics degree by the age of fifteen, and now, a month shy of his twentieth birthday, was already a research assistant close to finishing his doctorate. Socially, Simon was awkward, shy, and quite incapable of conducting a normal conversation about anything trivial, his mind constantly filled with arcane wonders, symbols and numerical relationships. Jack was just about the only person who could communicate with his son on anything like a normal level and there was a very special bond between them.

The last item in the box was a picture, framed and wrapped in plastic. He removed the covering and let the plastic fall to the floor. He cleaned the glass with his sleeve and looked at the image. His daughter Amanda, aged nine. The picture had been taken in Oxford five years earlier, a month before she disappeared. She was standing beside the cherry tree outside St Mary’s Church on The High, its branches smothered with blossom, sunlight catching her golden hair. She was smiling.

The day Amanda vanished had started like any other. She had headed off on her bike to school just a few streets away. But she never arrived. The police could find nothing: no signs of a struggle; no evidence of violent abduction. As time passed, her family’s grief and pain had not faded a jot. Instead, frustration, anger and bitterness were added to the mix. Pendragon had felt totally impotent. He was a detective chief inspector, his own daughter had disappeared in broad daylight, and he could do nothing.

Amanda’s disappearance destroyed Jack’s family. It was not a sudden devastating collapse but came gradually, creeping up on them as the years went by and Amanda remained lost to them. Jack found that his former ambition had evaporated. He no longer cared about promotion or
career progress. He did his job as well as ever, perhaps better, but had lost any drive to advance himself. At the same time, he and his wife Jean were drifting apart. A brooding feeling of mutual blame hung heavy between them. Neither of them ever rationalised it and they certainly never broached the subject, but it was there, a constant, malignant presence.

‘Enough,’ he said aloud as he placed the picture on the mantelpiece over the gas fire. He plucked the needle from the record and turned off the stereo. Grabbing his jacket, he locked the door, took the stairs two at a time and almost collided with a woman coming through the main door on the ground floor. She was carrying two bulging shopping bags.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he began.

She smiled.

‘May I …?’

‘Thanks, but I’m just down there,’ she said, nodding towards the corridor. ‘Number two.’ She put the bags down and offered him her hand. ‘Susan Latimer, Sue.’

‘Jack Pendragon.’

They shook hands and he appraised her silently. She was tall and slender, her brunette hair shoulder-length. She had a pretty if tired face, soft brown eyes and fine eyebrows, a transforming smile. He guessed she was in her early-forties.

‘
Chief Inspector
Jack Pendragon, I believe.’

He gave her a faint smile and looked at the bags. ‘They look heavy.’

‘And seem to get heavier with each step. Must be some weird Law of Nature.’

‘Like toast always landing butter-side down?’

‘Something like that,’ she laughed.

He picked up the bags for her and followed her down the corridor.

‘You must drop by for a cup of tea sometime,’ she said, taking them from him again after unlocking the door.

‘I’d like that.’

As he left the building it started to rain, huge drops that left dark smudges on the parched pavement. The sky was black but shot through with that almost supernatural glow that comes with electrical storms. The air felt thinner than normal, as though the oxygen was being sucked up into the higher reaches of the atmosphere. Pendragon ducked under shop canopies, dodging the downpour as best he could. A Bangladeshi grocer wished him good evening and tried to sell him some radishes. At the next corner, one of the local ‘characters’, a tailor, resplendent and stereotypical in pinstripe suit and with a tape measure around his neck, tried for the second time that day to persuade him to come in and be measured for a new ‘whistle’.

The pub was already half-full. It still stank of cigarettes even though the public smoking ban had been in effect for years. A jukebox blared a recent chart hit and a wide-screen plasma TV was showing a football game: Arsenal versus Newcastle. At the bottom of the screen a blue strip carried news headlines. Ordering a pint, Pendragon glanced round and saw the group from the station. Jez Turner spotted him at the same moment. He stood up and beckoned his boss over.

‘Afternoon, sir. The Super told me you were getting your place sorted.’

‘Got thirsty.’

Pendragon glanced around the table. His two inspectors, Rob Grant and Ken Towers, were there. They nodded. Between them sat two of the sergeants, Rosalind Mackleby and Jimmy Thatcher. At that moment the third sergeant, Terry Vickers, returned from the bar carrying a tray of drinks. Noticing the chief inspector for the first time, he glanced at his
pint. Pendragon shook his head. ‘I’m fine thanks, Sergeant.’ Then he remembered Vickers and Thatcher had been trawling for bones around Frimley Way all morning. ‘Anything turn up?’ he asked.

‘No, guv. We’ve searched the entire area. Waste bins, skips … nothing.’

‘You going to sit down, sir?’ Turner asked. ‘You’re making the place look untidy, as me old mum always says.’

Pendragon slipped off his jacket and sat down next to Turner, placing his beer on the rickety Formica-topped table already overcrowded with glasses and empty crisp packets.

‘Your turn, I believe, Jez,’ Rob Grant called over with a mocking smile. ‘And, please, make it a bit tasty. Your last bloody effort was piss poor.’

Turner threw Grant a dismissive look.

‘What’s the game?’ Pendragon asked.

‘Conundrums. I set the scene and they ask me questions that I have to answer truthfully. They try to figure out how the scene came about.’

Pendragon grinned. ‘God, that takes me back, I used to play this at Ox—’

For a telling moment here was silence around the table. Then Ken Towers broke in. ‘It’s okay, sir, no need to apologise for your education … I’m happy to name-drop Kennington Secondary Modern.’ There was laughter around the table.

Pendragon nodded, a brief smile playing across his lips, and Jez Turner said, ‘Okay. You ready? Right. John and Samantha are dead on the floor. There’s a damp patch on the carpet close to the bodies and shards of glass nearby. What’s happened?’

Pendragon eased back with his pint, watching the others around the table. He knew this one and had no intention of spoiling their fun.

‘Anyone else in the room?’

‘No.’

‘Doors and windows open or closed?’

‘All closed.’

‘John and Samantha … a married couple?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What do you mean, maybe?’ Rob Grant snapped. ‘Either they’re married or they’re not. You can’t be a bit married.’

Turner shrugged. ‘They live together.’

‘Are they old or young?’ Mackleby asked.

‘Middle-aged.’

‘How did they die?’

‘Suffocated.’

‘They were strangled?’

‘No.’

Grant turned to Inspector Towers. ‘What about the glass and the water, Ken? Someone must’ve broken in.’

‘Yeah. Broken windows?’ Towers asked.

‘Nope.’

Jimmy Thatcher took a long gulp of his lager and his face brightened. He peered over the glass. ‘Ah!’ he said as he brought his glass down on the table. ‘John and Samantha … they ain’t human, are they?’

Turner tried to look blank, but he would have made a useless poker player. ‘Not human?’ he bluffed.

‘Nah. They’re fish.’ Thatcher took another drink as the others looked at him, and Turner let out a sigh. ‘They’re goldfish. The cat knocked the bowl off the dresser. It smashed … glass everywhere. John and Samantha suffocated.’

Mackleby clapped her hands together and laughed. ‘Brilliant!’ Thatcher bowed theatrically and Jez Turner shook his head. ‘You’ve heard it before.’

‘Nah,’ Thatcher said with a smirk. ‘Just a bloody genius, that’s all.’ And he tapped the side of his head to emphasise the point.

‘Well done, smart arse,’ Turner retorted. ‘Your round, I believe.’ The smile slid from Thatcher’s face as he stood up and strode dutifully over to the bar.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ Pendragon said quietly to Turner, ‘I’ve already heard that one, and a tableful of Oxford undergraduates took a hell of a lot longer to get the answer.’

‘Makes me feel a whole lot better, sir,’ Turner said, draining his glass.

‘So, did you manage to get the SIM card from Middleton?’

‘I was trying his mobile all morning. He had it switched off. I finally reached him about an hour ago. He promised he’d drop it off at the station this afternoon. Said he was on his way to a company function.’

Pendragon was about to reply when his phone rang.

‘Yes?’ He stared off into the middle distance, expressionless. ‘When? … Yes, I know it. I’ll be there in five minutes.’ He stood up and pulled on his jacket.

‘Another incident,’ he announced to the policemen around the table. Turning towards Mackleby and Grant, he added, ‘I’ll need you two with us. We’ve got another dead body at a place called La Dolce Vita, a restaurant a few doors down from Jangles.’