Shattered Icon

Part One

God’s Longitude

1

The bird circles gracefully, high in the mountain thermal, a slow, lazy motion. Delicate fine-tunings of its wings, the product of ancient evolutionary forces, keep its head perfectly level in the updraft and its black eyes steadily fixed on a spot five hundred feet below. These eyes are focused on a large, motionless animal. Ancient instincts tell the bird that this big animal is in trouble.

A shadow flits briefly over the man. Something big, but he can’t think what. He forces his eyes open but at first sees only the harsh sun. Then a high, black shape: a bird, a beautiful thing, soaring in the mountain air.

And another. And another.

Need to drink. Tongue a lead weight. Face hot, beaded with sweat.

Lots of them now.

They’re circling around me. Getting lower.

A buzzard lands, about twenty yards away. Not graceful at all: powerful tearing beak, bald head, long scraggy neck, big talons. And those black shiny eyes.

Strong flapping behind me, from big wings, and a scuffling noise, like two birds squabbling. And then a quiet rustling sound, very close. Almost at my neck.

I can’t move!

Several pairs of eyes now. No pity in them, no way to plead or reason, no way for our minds to connect. Closing in, in cautious little hops. Indians round a wagon circle.

They’ll go for the softest parts of me first, the eyes. Then maybe my ears and nose. Then they’ll start on my neck and cheeks, tearing at the flesh.

Don’t die, not like this. Not eaten alive by vultures.

‘It’s not like forensic entomology, for example.’

The Professor – at least that’s what he appears to be – is a small, weedy, wrinkled man with a sweaty, pinched face and a turned-down mouth with thin, mean lips. He is wearing a cheap grey nylon suit, an absurdity in the Jamaican climate: it is stained with sweat from his armpits. A gaudy tie is pulled wide at the neck. His eyes are small and black. He is leaning over a small wooden artefact on the table in front of him. It is in three panels, hinged together so that the two side panels can fold on top of the central one. This central part contains a little rectangle of gnarled wood. The other two panels are painted, a mother and child on the left panel, Christ crucified on the other against a black and stormy sky. He is scanning this strange object with a large magnifying glass.

‘Entomology?’ A second man scratches his head.

The Professor smiles primly. ‘Insects. If this was an insect we would have a large DNA database. But as you see, this is a piece of wood, not an insect, and wood, after all, is dead. There are some special tests we can apply to test for particular types – staining, shining ultraviolet light on them and so on. But these are only useful for identifying unusual families of trees, usually obscure species from South America. The Vochysiaceae family, for example, accumulates aluminium from the soil, and its wood turns blue if we apply a special reagent.’

As execution chambers go, this one is comfortable, even luxurious. The room is large. One wall consists of nothing but French windows. Beyond it there is a broad balcony, and beyond that the black expanse of the midnight Caribbean. Expensive air conditioners whisper, barely audible, from the corners. The floor is laid with imported Italian marble, in big multicoloured squares. The furniture is heavy, dark brown and ornately carved in the Mexican style. Exotic lampstands and vases are scattered around, and Jamaican artwork in bright primary colours decorates the walls.

Three people are seated on a deep, low, white leather sofa. In the middle is a bearded man, tall and well-built, in his early thirties. He is sitting upright, tense and watchful, calculating the odds. A teenage girl to his left, casually dressed in jeans and white sweater, is breathing in big gulps, hyperventilating. She has a bruised cheek. Her eyes are wide with fear and she is trying hard to keep herself under control. On the man’s right is a woman also in her early thirties. She too is casually dressed and calculating the odds, coming up with the same hopeless answer. They know that, so long as the Professor keeps talking, they stay alive. Their problems begin when he shuts up.

Two men are standing across from them at a table. One of them is the Professor; the other is of Mediterranean extraction, probably Greek. He is short and stocky, with a deep-wrinkled, angular face. He is wearing black trousers and an open-necked shirt with a silver cross – or swastika – hanging around his neck on a chain.

A heavy black revolver lies on the polished table in front of the Greek, within his arm’s length. His companion is talking.

Apart from the Greek, six others in the room are armed with guns, five men and a woman. The woman is leaning back, relaxed, in an armchair in one corner. She too has Mediterranean features; she is wearing a long, slim, pink evening dress and a lot of gold. She has a revolver resting on her lap. The five men are sitting around on casual chairs, with the exception of a young, black Jamaican with dreadlocks. He is sitting cross-legged on a bean cushion and is rolling a large joint, his gun on the floor. He seems to be more interested in his joint than in the prisoners. The woman, however, is watching them carefully, a cat eyeing up a mouse, a distant half-smile on her lips. From time to time she rotates the barrel of her gun, a chamber at a time, as if checking that it is loaded.

‘A scanning electron microscope is a lot of work, and to tell you the truth, my most useful tool is this magnifying glass. For example,’ the Professor says, peering closely at the wood, ‘there are about eighteen thousand species of tree worldwide, but I can already, after a few seconds with my lens, narrow this wood down to a few hundred possibilities.’

He drones on. His small black eyes are shining enthusiastically and his lips are puckered primly. ‘Tree trunks are really marvels of plumbing. There are chains of large cells which carry water from the roots to the leaves, and more chains which carry the sugary liquid made by the leaves back down through the tree trunk. Different species have different patterns of plumbing, you know. Ah, now this is interesting. Here we have big structures mixed in with the smaller, finer cells. That means I can eliminate a whole swathe of trees, in particular the softwoods. I believe we are down to ash, hickory or oak.’

The young Jamaican says: ‘Ya.’ He has finished rolling the joint. He pulls out a thin blue lighter, flicks it and puffs. Whorls of ganja smoke begin to drift upwards. He watches them rise towards the ceiling, a look of contentment settling on his face.

The Professor looks up from his magnifying glass. ‘Jesus Christ was most probably crucified on a cross made from a white oak, a common tree in the Middle East then and now. Something like a boat was discovered some decades ago on Mount Ararat in Turkey. It turned out to be made from white oak, and enthusiasts have seen it as evidence that the boat was Noah’s Ark.’ Again that prim, superior smile. ‘There are several types of oak, quercus robur, quercus rubra…’

‘Doctor…’

But the Professor seems insensitive to the volcano of impatience building up inside his companion. ‘…and I can tell you that this particular wood is white oak.’

The Greek says, ‘What are you telling us, Doctor? That the wood is from the Middle East?’

‘Unfortunately white oak is also found in North America. It was often used for shipbuilding two hundred years ago. However, in my opinion this wood is much more than two centuries old. And there are subtle differences between North American and Middle Eastern white oak. It is my opinion that this is not North American white oak. Yes, it comes from the Middle East. And yes, it is very, very old.’

The Greek’s temper has reached its limits. He asks: ‘Is it the icon or not? Yes or no?’

The Professor smiles triumphantly. ‘Of course proper verification would require carbon-14 dating. But I can safely rule out some sort of elaborate modern forgery.’

For the captives, the remark is a death sentence.

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ The Greek exhales air as if a pressure valve has been opened. ‘I think you can leave us now. Cassandra, would you see to the Doctor’s fee?’

The Professor gives a slight bow of his head. ‘I would like to be well clear of this island before’ – he glances briefly at the captives – ‘before there is any unpleasantness.’

The Greek exposes his teeth. ‘You will be long gone before anything happens here.’ The woman in pink uncrosses her legs, stands up and walks towards the prisoners. Her high heels click-click sharply on the stone floor.

The Professor gives a last glance at the prisoners, this one slightly anxious. ‘They have seen my face, you know.’

‘Doctor, you have absolutely no worries in that direction.’

She raises her gun.

2

It was more or less closing time. Janice had left with her usual cheery ‘Byee!’ and I was about to set the alarm when a maroon Rolls-Royce drew to a halt on the double yellow lines outside the door. It was pouring with rain and the man was wet in the interval between leaving the Roller and scurrying into the shop.

I’d seen him around the streets of Lincoln from time to time. He was small, rotund, white-haired, with a tiny, prim mouth, piggy eyes and a complexion which told of a lifetime’s devotion to port. The voice was middle-aged, English public school, with the faint air of disdainful superiority which affronted my proletarian roots. ‘Mister Blake? Harry Blake?’

‘The same.’

‘My name is Tebbit. Toby Tebbit.’

The Tebbits. Our local gentry, tucked away behind a thousand or so acres of woodland, back of Lincoln, surrounded by a high wall. ‘Sir Toby?’

‘The same.’ He brushed a few drops of rain from his camel-hair coat. ‘Mister Blake, if I can get to the point. I’m looking for some help. I’ve had a parcel delivered from Jamaica. It’s a heap of paper, basically. Very old, so far as I can see.’

‘How did you come to—?’

‘In due course.’ Spoken in the slightly irritated tone of a man who is not used to being questioned. ‘I’d be grateful if you could evaluate the papers for me.’

‘That’ll be fine. Do you have them here?’

‘I felt it better to have you come and see them.’

‘No problem. My assistant will keep shop. I’ll call for them at ten o’clock tomorrow, then.’

Tebbit nodded curtly, turned his collar up and left to brave the rain between shop entrance and Roller again. He hadn’t bothered to tell me where he lived.

The next morning was blue sky, but dark clouds were on the horizon. I took my elderly Toyota out of Lincoln and along a country lane. After a few miles I turned into a single-track road guarded by a lodge house. A notice on a stone gatepost displayed the words: PICARDY HOUSE. A sign on the other gatepost said: PRIVATE. NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY.

The road was tarmacked and lined by low metal fencing, and it meandered through fields scattered with oak trees and sheep. About a mile along there was denser woodland. I drove past a small lake on the left; a rowing boat was tied up at a short pier. Then I curved in towards a large gravelled courtyard with fountains, manicured bushes and statues in the Italian style fashionable amongst people who had gardeners on their staff a century or two ago. Ten generations of family wealth looked coldly down on me as I climbed moss-green steps and tapped a heavy brass knocker. The door opened almost immediately.

She was about nineteen, with dark eyes and black hair swept back in a pony tail, and she was wearing a black sweater and jeans. She gave me an appraising look. ‘Daddy will be along.’ I followed her down a broad corridor and into what I took to be the study. It was about thirty feet by twenty, and wall-to-wall Axminster. One wall was taken up by a bookcase: old books, expensively bound, neatly laid out and, I suspected, never read. She motioned me to an armchair, eased a Persian cat on to her lap and sat facing me. The room was chilly.

Again that appraising stare. ‘So you’re Harry Blake.’

I said, ‘Yes.’

‘I’m Debbie. What do you do?’

‘I’m an antiquarian bookseller. I specialise in old maps and manuscripts, mostly.’

‘That sounds boring.’

‘Not if you have an imagination. What about you?’ I asked. ‘Any interests?’

‘Clubbing and horses, mostly.’ She smiled wickedly. ‘And fit guys.’

Daddy came in, dressed in an old sweater and baggy trousers. ‘This is private business, Deb. Shut the door on your way out.’

Debbie dropped the cat and flounced out, glowing with teenage angst.

Sir Toby waved me towards a desk next to a big bay window. Beyond it was a lawn and then trees. In the shadows of the wood I could just make out a thin man with wellingtons, a black labrador and a rifle.

‘Didn’t even know I had a relative in Jamaica,’ Sir Toby complained.

He paused, as if waiting for some comment; I gave him a nod. He sniffed and continued, ‘A man called Winston Sinclair. I’m his next of kin apparently. The man died without property.’ Spoken in a slightly ashamed tone.

‘You want me to take a look at the material?’

‘You do deal in antique documents, do you not?’

Under the bay window was a wooden box about the size of a biscuit tin. Sir Toby heaved it on to the desk. Stencilled lettering on its side spelled out Silver Hills Coffee. 20 kg. He rummaged through wrapping and handed me a wodge of quarto-sized papers about three inches thick. ‘Can’t make sense of it. What about you? It is a manuscript of some sort, is it not?’

The condition of the pages was good, although the ink was browned with age and the page corners were lightly foxed, as we say in the antiquarian book trade. The first page was taken up with a title written in a sprawling, slightly immature hand: MY TRAVELS TO AMERICA AND THE ARCHIPELAGO OF MEXICO, WHERE THE ISLANDS OF CUBA AND JAMAICA ARE TO BE FOUND. Below the title was the author’s name: JAMES OGILVIE. I’d never heard of him. A faded watermark ran through all the pages. I held the top page up to the window. I could just make out a crown surrounded by concentric ovals. Between the ovals were the words: HER MAJESTY’S STATE PAPER OFFICE. At a guess I put the manuscript at four hundred years old. But the words were incomprehensible; they seemed to be written in a sort of shorthand.

‘More like a journal,’ I said. ‘It could take some time to transcribe it.’

‘How long?’

‘Days, probably.’

‘I’m driving down to London this evening and won’t be back until Sunday.’

‘No problem. We’ll leave it until you return.’

Sir Toby hesitated. ‘Actually I’m anxious to be shot of it. Why don’t you take it away? Give me a valuation when I get back.’

‘I’m not sure I want the responsibility. What if I had a fire or a burglary?’

Another hesitation while Sir Toby weighed the odds. Then he said, ‘I’ll run that risk. But there is one thing.’ He lowered his voice in the empty study. ‘Confidentiality. For reasons which need not concern you, I don’t want to be connected with this journal.’

‘I’ll put it in my flat. I live alone. Nobody will know about it but myself.’ I tried to take the baronet by surprise: ‘Sir Toby, is there something about this document you’re not telling me?’

‘Of course not, what an absurd idea.’ He managed a sardonic laugh.

‘Who was the Jamaican lawyer?’ I asked.

The lips pursed disapprovingly. ‘What on earth does that have to do with you?’

‘If there’s something of historical interest in here, I might want to chase up the source.’

Sir Toby froze. ‘You will do no such thing. Confine yourself to transcribing the document. Just give me your translation, your valuation and your invoice.’

I lifted the parcel. ‘I’ll get back to you after the weekend.’ Sir Toby nodded curtly. He turned to the bookcase; as I left the study he was pretending to read a book.

Outside, Debbie was being a femme fatale, lounging on the bonnet of the car like a model in a car show. ‘People find Daddy a bit abrupt sometimes,’ she said.

‘Not me,’ I lied. ‘I’ll probably be back next week.’

She rolled off the bonnet and leaned into the car window. ‘Do you ride?’ she asked, her eyes wide with enquiry. I gave her a sideways look and roared off. There was a spattering of gunfire in the woods to my left.

3

The shop was quiet and I gave Janice the afternoon off and closed early.

In my flat, I took the manuscript from its box and put it in the safe in my bedroom. The safe was an elderly Guardsman with twelve-digit combination, a separate key and fire-resistant lining, and it had a wooden surround which made it look like a bedside cabinet. Normally it held nothing more valuable than my passport, a few near-the-limit credit cards and a thin pile of banknotes.

The Crown and Martyr was crowded, as usual on a Wednesday night, but I found myself a corner. Barney and I went through our ritual: he asked me what I wanted, I said the chicken curry and a pint of bitter, and he went off to collect it. The pub was ablaze with light and chatter, good after the grey silence of the Tebbit mausoleum. There was a birthday party at the next table and half a dozen office girls were letting their hair down. Somebody was leaning forward and speaking sotto voce. I caught snatches: ‘…honeymoon … rubber gloves … I’m told you have to touch the beastly thing…’, followed by shrieks of female laughter. I settled down to my pint, vaguely disturbed by the events of the day and unable to make sense of them.

I’d finished my meal and my second pint when I spotted Barney waving a telephone receiver at me from the far end of the bar. I pushed my way towards it, surprised that anyone would know to contact me here.

‘Mr Blake?’ Her English was good, although the consonants were a bit harsh. The accent was Mediterranean or Turkish, and I put her age as about my own, thirtyish.

‘You have something in your possession, given to you by Toby Tebbit?’

How the hell did she know that? Cautiously: ‘Perhaps.’

‘And Tebbit has told you nothing about the contents?’

‘Who am I speaking to, please?’ I asked.

‘You may call me Cassandra. I have information about the item which I’d like to share with you.’

There was another outburst of female laughter in the pub. I put my hand over an ear. ‘I’m listening.’

‘We should meet, but we can’t be seen speaking together, Mr Blake. Do you know the prayer room in the cathedral?’

‘You mean the Langland Chantry?’

The line went dead.

The night air was cold after the warmth of the pub. I trudged up Steep Hill, my mind buzzing with possibilities, none of them sensible. The cathedral was still open. I nodded to the lady at the collection box. There were a few late evening tourists, sparsely scattered around the huge, mind-emptying interior. I made my way towards the far end, past the big transept, before turning right into a small stone room with a heavy door and bars on its window. A notice said: HERE IS A PLACE TO BE QUIET WITH GOD. Another said: SILENCE PLEASE.

The centre of the room was taken up with a small table on which candles were burning. A wall was taken up with a plain wooden cross, another with tall, narrow stained-glass windows. There were hard wooden chairs against the walls, and there was a gargoyle, mother with child, with squat faces like Easter Island statues. The room was empty.

I waited. After about ten minutes the room began to feel vaguely oppressive; maybe it was the silence, maybe it was the overbearing presence of the iconry. I turned to leave and was startled to see a woman standing silently at the door, watching me.

She had short black hair and a hooked nose and dark eyes, and she may have been Greek, Italian, or even Turkish. She was dressed in a business suit, and she wasn’t a local. Her dark eyes looked directly into mine. ‘Mr Blake?’

‘Yes. And you are?’

‘I’ll come to the point, Mr Blake. I’d like to buy it.’

I shook my head, mystified and uneasy. ‘You’ll have to discuss that with Sir Toby. By the way,’ – I lowered my voice in the empty cathedral – ‘how do you know he had the journal? That information is confidential.’

She waved a hand dismissively. ‘Unfortunately Tebbit is in London and I need to acquire the document quickly.’

I asked her, ‘It’s cold here. Can we talk about this someplace warm? Over a glass of wine, maybe?’

She shook her head impatiently.

I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

‘I’m authorised to offer you twenty thousand pounds for it.’

In Sir Toby’s study I’d mentally bracketed the journal somewhere between one and three thousand dollars. For a moment I wondered if the woman was some sort of lunatic. There was something not right about her; whether it was her body language, or the direct way she had approached me, or the slight air of fanaticism which she seemed to exude, I couldn’t say. ‘I’d like to help, but it’s not mine to sell.’

Again that impatient shake of the head. ‘I have no time for horse-trading. We need the journal immediately. Let me go to my limit, which is fifty thousand pounds. You can have that by tomorrow morning, in cash if you like.’

Fifty thousand! I began to feel a sense of unreality, as if I was watching a scene in a movie. The woman was peering at me, trying to read my mind. ‘I’m sorry, but if it’s not mine to sell, how can I sell it?’

‘That is a conundrum.’ She nodded thoughtfully, running a finger absentmindedly up and down her neck. Then, ‘Is a hundred thousand pounds the answer?’

I think I must have gone pale. Certainly I felt my mouth going dry. The woman was deadly serious; I could see it in the tense downturn of her wide mouth and her steady, disconcerting stare. If twenty thousand was silly money, a hundred thousand was scary. It would also clear my overdraft, car loan and credit cards, and make a big dent in the mortgage on the flat. I actually hesitated for a moment. But then I was saying, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no further point in this conversation. Why don’t you just find out where Tebbit is and ask him to phone through his authorisation to sell?’

‘The fact is, the journal is not Tebbit’s to sell. It belongs to the people I represent.’ She paused. ‘And you have no right to be holding it.’

The tone of menace came with a touch so light that I wondered if I had imagined it. I asked, ‘The people you represent?’

Curtly: ‘Don’t concern yourself with that.’

‘I don’t understand. If the journal is yours, why are you trying to buy it? Why not just prove ownership? Go through the courts if you have to.’

She shook her head. ‘It would create…’ – she struggled for the right word – ‘complications.’

‘As would my selling it to you without Sir Toby’s permission. Look, he’ll be back on Sunday. Why don’t you speak to him then?’

‘You must not return this article to Tebbit. But I see we will have to find other ways to persuade you.’ She gave me a smile of undiluted malice, and said, ‘We’ll meet again, Mr Blake.’

‘I look forward to it.’

The smile intensified, and then her high heels were clattering along the stone slabs of the nave.

I gave myself five minutes, feeling a bit shaky. There was a light drizzle outside, and a little cluster of merry revellers around a hot dog stall: I recognised the office party from the Crown and Martyr. I took the road round the side of the cathedral and turned off towards my flat, at the end of a cul-de-sac shared by half a dozen upmarket houses. The lane was deserted.

Feeling exposed in the street lights, I turned into the gravelled courtyard, fumbling for my keys and expecting heavies to jump out of the bushes. Cursing my overactive imagination, I inserted the Chubb key and turned it. Then the Yale, the wrong one, of course. Trying again, with an unsteady hand; finally I got it right and the door opened.

I groped in the dark for the light switch. The hallway was empty; through to the living room: empty. Of course. I padded through to the bedroom, resisting the ridiculous temptation to look under my bed. Then I went round the flat checking doors and windows. Back in the hallway I hung up my jacket and kicked off my shoes, grinning and sighing with relief and mentally calling myself an idiot.

I was in the kitchen, rustling up a tomato sandwich and still grinning at my own silliness, when I spotted the rainwater on the windowsill. Just a few drops.

This time, when I went through the flat again, breadknife in hand, I opened wardrobes and looked under the bed. Finally I opened the safe, a feeling of dread washing over me. But the Model G400 Guardsman with key, keypad and fire-resistant lining was undisturbed, and I went weak with relief.

I threw my clothes off and ate the sandwich in bed, flicking through the journal pages but unable to make any sense of it. Finally I put it back in the safe and switched the light off. Things were swirling round in my head but I could make no sense of them either. I listened for sounds, but heard only the steady patter of rain on