Secrets of the Dead

She checked into the Romische Kaiser Hotel, across the road from the Porta Nigra, the Black Gate featured on Michael’s postcard. She couldn’t stop staring at it.

Did you see it? she asked Michael, carrying on a dialogue she’d been having all the way from London. Did you stay in this very same hotel? When were you here?

At least she could guess that. The letter from the museum was dated late July, a month before Michael died. Michael had been unexpectedly away around then, at a conference of EU border agencies in Saarbrucken. She thought she could remember a conversation about it: a sudden change of plan, a colleague who’d dropped out at the last minute, forcing Michael to go. He’d brought her back a sausage and a bottle of Reisling – the only good thing to come out of the conference, he’d said.

He hadn’t mentioned going to Trier.

Most towns, Abby supposed, stood on the foundations of the past. In Trier, past and present stood side by side. It seemed everything in the last thousand years was just a threadbare carpet laid down over the Roman town, whose remains poked through the holes at every turn. The Black Gate, four stories high and completely intact. The modern road bridge across the Moselle, supported on piers originally sunk by Roman engineers. The high brick walls of the Roman basilica, dwarfing the pink gingerbread mansion beside it. And beyond it, across a green lawn and a lake, the museum.

She had an appointment, but the receptionist said Dr Gruber was in a meeting that had run over. Abby bought a ticket and wandered through the museum while she waited. In a long, semi-circular gallery, she found huge pieces of sculpture lined up in rows. When she read the descriptions, they all seemed to be tomb monuments.

‘To reach the living, it is necessary first to navigate the dead.’

She turned. A thin man in a blue suit had come up behind her. His hair had receded, revealing a bulging, glossy forehead. He had a bony face, and a bristling moustache that ought to have gone out of fashion seventy years earlier.

‘Mrs Cormac?’

That caught her out. Even when she was married, she’d never felt like a Mrs. She shook his hand. ‘Dr Gruber?’

‘The Romans believed that the dead contaminated the living. They buried them outside the city walls. You could not enter a Roman city without walking past the tombs, sometimes for many kilometres. That is what we try to replicate here.’

He led her out through an unmarked door and up a flight of stairs to his office. A beige machine stood on a table against the wall. Behind the desk, tall windows overlooked the park and the high brick building across the lake.

‘You know what that is?’ Gruber asked.

‘Constantine’s basilica.’ She’d read it in a leaflet in the hotel.

‘It was the throne room of Constantine’s palace, when he ruled the empire from here in Trier. Der Kaiser Constantine.’ He fiddled with a pen on his desk. ‘Of course, today you ask most people, they say Beckenbauer is Der Kaiser.’

Abby smiled as if she knew what he meant. ‘What’s the building next to it?’

‘The local government.’

‘Not quite the same as a Roman emperor.’

‘But functionally it is the same, no?’ He scratched at his moustache. ‘There are certain places where power abides. One thousand and seven hundred years ago, Constantine built his palace there. Since then it has been used by Frankish counts, medieval archbishops, Renaissance prince-electors, Prussian kings and now our local government. Every generation of power comes to this place. Do they think that the history gives them legitimacy? Or is there some animal response inside us, which these places subconsciously provoke? That attracts.’

Abby had heard men talk about animal responses before. Usually, they only had one particular thing in mind. She pulled her cardigan closer across her chest and forced herself to look him in the eye.

‘You said that Michael came to visit you here.’

The pen in his hand stopped moving. ‘This is correct.’

‘You said you could tell me what he wanted.’

‘I said I could not tell you on the telephone.’

‘He brought you something – a piece of papyrus he wanted you to analyse. I’ve read the letter you gave him.’

She’d picked up some basic German on the mission in Kosovo: that, together with an online translation tool and a dictionary had allowed her to piece together most of the meaning. She hadn’t wanted anyone else to see it.

This is to confirm receipt of a late antique papyrus, unknown provenance, for micro-CT scanning. All results will be kept highly confidential and informed to the owner solely.

‘If you have read the letter, you know this is confidential. The results of the tests, I can give only to Mr Lascaris himself.’

‘Michael’s dead.’

‘And you are his executor? His heir? You have papers that prove it?’

‘I was his partner.’

‘I am sorry. He did not mention you.’

Abby leaned forward. ‘Dr Gruber, Michael was murdered in some pretty extreme circumstances. I was there. I don’t know how much he told you about himself …’