Don’t worry, sir, I’ll cover my tracks.’
Edie heard another beep, the call disconnected. She then heard the metallic
And then he was gone, exiting the office as unobtrusively as he had entered.
Edie slowly counted to twenty before she crawled out from under the desk. Forced to straddle Dr Padgham’s corpse, she took one look at his bloody, mutilated eye socket… and promptly threw up. All over the Persian carpet. Not that it mattered — the carpet was already stained with blood and brain matter.
Still on all fours, she wiped her mouth on her sweater sleeve. She had never liked Jonathan Padgham. But someone else had liked him even less. Enough to kill him in cold blood.
Lurching to her feet, Edie picked up the telephone.
Her goal being to get out of the museum as quickly as possible, she left the office and headed for the main corridor. The Hopkins Museum was housed in a four-storey nineteenth-century Beaux Art mansion located in the heart of the Dupont Circle area, a vibrant commercial and residential district. Once out of the museum, help was only a shout away.
Coming to a halt at the end of the hall that led to the main corridor, Edie tentatively peered around the corner.
‘Oh God.’
Stunned to see the killer, Edie caught herself in mid-gasp. A behemoth of a man in grey overalls with a black ski mask pulled over his head, he was standing in front of the wall monitor and security keypad next to the door leading out of the administration area. In order to gain access to this area, each and every employee, regardless of rank, had to key a personal ID number into the security system, the procedure repeated when one left. The code activated the lock on the intimidating steel door. The computer system enabled museum security to monitor all employees’ whereabouts.
It occurred to Edie that in order to enter the office suite, the murderer must have had a valid security code.
At the moment that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was stuck on the fourth floor with a murderer. To get to the lift or stairs, she had to pass through the steel door. Meaning she’d have to wait him out. Once he left the premises, she could escape the building.
Wondering what the killer was doing, Edie watched his super-sized hand move across the keypad with surprising dexterity. She knew from experience that it took no more than two seconds to key in a fivedigit code and unlock the door, but by her reckoning the killer had been standing in front of the monitor and keypad a good thirty seconds.
‘Fucking shit!’ she heard the killer mutter as he removed a notepad and pencil from his breast pocket.
As she watched him scribble something onto the notepad, Edie went slack-jawed. Although the monitor was too far away to be sure, she suspected the killer had accessed the computer security log. If true, that meant ‘E. Miller’ had just popped up on the monitor. Beside her name would be the exact date — 12/1/08 — and time — 13:38:01 — that she had entered the fourth floor. Even more damning, there would be no date or time indicated in the ‘Depart’ column.
Edie had watched enough crime dramas on TV to know she’d been made.
She had to find a hiding place.
Terrified the Neanderthal in the grey overalls would somehow home in on her, Edie slowly eased away from the corner. She then ran down the hall grateful for the hideous maroon carpet that muffled her footfalls, past the office with the sprawled corpse on the floor.
Turning right, she headed down another hall, this one dead-ending at a storeroom. Lined with shelving units stacked with boxes, it would make an excellent hiding place.
Or would have made an excellent hiding place had it been open.
She stared at the locked door.
If she could get downstairs to the exhibition galleries, she could yank an artefact off the wall, instantly triggering the museum alarm system. The DC police would arrive within minutes, maybe even seconds if there happened to be a squad car in the area. But to do that, she’d have to first sneak past Dr Padgham’s killer.
Too faint of heart to give this idea further consideration, Edie spun on her booted heel. As she did, she caught sight of a bright red sign with bold white lettering.
Hope renewed at seeing the word EXIT, Edie rushed down the hall. When she reached the door, she grabbed the bar handle and pushed, bracing herself for what she assumed would be a very loud alarm.
3
‘I think Isis is like the total embodiment of the wise woman. That’s why my magic circle practises a devotional ritual to invoke the power of Isis at each full moon.’
C?dmon Aisquith glanced at the pierced and tattooed speaker, who clutched an autographed copy of
‘Do you by any chance mention the rites of Isis in your book?’
About to answer with a terse negative, C?dmon caught himself. His American readers tended to fall into two categories: the erudite and the asinine. Not that it mattered, as he’d been ordered by his publicist — who looked on with the stern demeanour of an English headmistress — to treat all questions, no matter how inane or idiotic, with due consideration. Particularly if the questioner had already purchased a copy of his book.
C?dmon schooled his features into an attentive expression. ‘Er, no. I am afraid there are no magical rituals detailed in the text. However, you are quite correct in that Isis, like her Greek counterpart Sophia, represents wisdom in all its myriad forms.’
Apple polished, C?dmon thanked the young woman for her interest in ancient mysteries and cordially took his leave of her. A private man, he was uncomfortable in the role of public author, finding the meet-and-greet segment of book signings a tiresome exercise in the art of chinwagging, an art he’d never quite mastered.
His belly aching from the cheap champagne and his facial muscles aching from the fool’s grin he’d been forced to wear since entering the bookshop, he was actually relieved when his mobile began to softly vibrate, the incoming call a perfect excuse to turn his back on the nattering group crowded into the diminutive confines of Dupont Books. To lessen his publicist’s displeasure, he made a big to-do of raising his mobile to his left ear, silently signaling that he needed to take the call. This being the last leg of a twelve-city tour, they’d had their fill of one another, C?dmon anxious to return to the quiet monotony of pen and ink.
‘Yes, hello,’ he said, always feeling like a bit of an ass speaking into, essentially, thin air.
‘C?dmon Aisquith?’
Politely correcting the man’s butchered pronunciation of his name, he said, ‘Who’s calling, please?’
The question met with a long silence followed by a
‘Bloody hell,’ C?dmon muttered, yanking the mobile from his ear. The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly bristled. He didn’t give out his number. Hit with the unnerving sensation that he was being watched by someone who had no interest in discussing ancient lore or swilling free bubbly, he turned on his heel. Slowly. Calmly. A man with nothing to fear.
Only he knew such posturing was an outright lie.
Using the training ingrained from the eleven years he’d spent indentured in Her Majesty’s Security Service, he casually glanced about the bookshop, searching for the face that did not belong in the crowd, the telltale flush, the
