might just mean something to you.’
She was already hailing a cab. He followed, bemused.
Ten minutes of light Edinburgh traffic found them in Grassmarket, climbing another set of tenement stairs to another flat: Nina’s own.
The flat was pleasant but spare, chic but austere. The flat of someone who wanted to live quietly and unfussily, or of someone who expected to be moving again soon. He sat down at her request in a leather chair. What was she going to show him?
She returned with two mugs of tea, in Rangers Football Club mugs.
‘Nice flat.’ He didn’t know what else to say.
Nina looked around the living room, appraisingly, as if she were an estate agent estimating the value. ‘Yeah well.’ She shrugged again. ‘I can only afford it because I sold up in London. Sold my ill-gotten gains.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I used to work in the City. But the job was so intense I quit.’
He gazed at her, wide-eyed; she laughed, ruefully. ‘Ach. You didn’t take me for a banker, did you?’
‘Well…’
‘You’re right. I wasn’t. Took me five years to realize it. I don’t know what the hell I am but I’m pretty sure I’m not one of nature’s bankers. But I made a bit of cash so I’m set. I guess. For a while.’
It occurred to Adam that, stupidly, he hadn’t ever asked her what she did. Her job: the most basic and essential of questions. The darkening whirl of drama meant he had neglected the primaries of his craft. Get the facts, all the facts, especially the most basic: age, job, race, marital status and hair colour if you are writing for a tabloid. Pretty Nina McLintock, 27-year-old brunette, spoke of her father’s death…
‘What do you do then, now?’
‘Charity work. Atoning for my sins.’
‘What kind of charity work?’
‘Scottish Shelter. For homeless people. I help them raise and make money, because I know how to handle money.’
‘Full time?’
‘Three days a week. The pay is dreck but that doesn’t matter, right now. Anyway, I’ve taken some time off, since Dad.’
‘Of course.’
Nina set the tea on the table. ‘Enough. Look at us! Reduced to bourgeois chit-chat.’ Her smile was terse. ‘Let me see if I can engage you. Re-engage you? Do you want to see what I’ve got?’
‘Yes, please.’
She stood and crossed the room to a cupboard. Opening a large drawer, she pulled out a plastic shopping bag. Then she dropped the bag on the coffee table between them. It was apparently stuffed full of small slips of paper.
Adam stared.
‘Remember last night?’
‘Not something I’m going to forget.’
‘Remember I ran into the kitchen-’
‘Of course.’
‘I went to get this.’ Nina gestured at the bag. ‘Receipts. Hundreds of receipts. Maybe thousands.’
He didn’t understand, though he could see the dim outlines of where this was going. Then he realized. ‘Your dad’s receipts.’
‘Exactly! You were a freelancer once, right? You understand. ’ She barely waited for his affirmative reply, then hurried on: ‘Dad was meticulous about this stuff, tax returns, claiming expenses. All that. As I was searching his desk, last night, I suddenly remembered that he kept all his receipts in a big bag in the kitchen, he’d chuck them in there automatically, whenever he got home.’
Adam felt the pleasure of something unfolding, reverse origami. ‘I get it. All his receipts from last year, you can see exactly what he did, where he went?’
‘I’ve already looked at a few. And… in here-’ she tipped the bag over, and dozens of little slips and chits and invoices rustled onto the table, ‘-is an exact record of where he went on that trip around Britain, and Europe, and everywhere, last year.’
‘So?’
‘He went to Tomar in Portugal. He went to Rosslyn again and again. He went to Temple Bruer. He went to the Dordogne.’
‘Rosslyn, Temple Bruer…’
‘Yup. He went to a whole bunch of sites connected with the Templars. A long, long trip. And then he went to South America. Because he really was on to something. He must have been. He did intense research! My dad was not a lunatic. He was a scholar, a serious man, and he did serious research last year. And it’s all here, all the clues we need. We just have to piece together the damn puzzles, follow this paper trail. And then we can find out what he discovered.’
Adam gazed at the litter of paper and he recalled McLintock’s words. It’s all here, it’s all true, it’s more strange than you could ever realize.
The Templars are connected to everything.
17
TUMP Lab, Zana, north Peru
‘So, darling, tell me your theory.’
Dan Kossoy was sitting on his usual stool, in the centre of the main lab in Zana, virtually the only clean modern building in the town. His grey T-shirt expressed support for the Hamilton Mastiffs ice hockey team, his wise brown eyes expressed sincere interest in his anthropologist’s latest conception. But he’d used the word darling — and it was the first time he’d ever used it.
The lab was quiet except for the low buzz coming from the big fridges, which stored the Moche bones, cradled in soft yellow polystyrene foam — like holy babies in swaddling.
‘Jess? Your theory. Tell me! You have my unusually undivided attention!’
‘Why? Because we are sleeping together?’
He shook his head and looked genuinely hurt. Jessica immediately regretted her flippancy. Dan was a decent and kindly man; that was why she liked him. He didn’t deserve sarcasm, however frivolous.
‘Sorry, Dan. That was glib. I just…’ She took her seat, on a stool next to his; then she pushed the blonde hair back from her eyes and looked at him. ‘To be honest, the situation between us is kinda weird. I don’t normally do this sort of thing. Us, I mean. Sorry. I want to know that you are taking me seriously as an anthropologist, a scientist, not just because we are… going out. Does that make sense?’
He gazed at her; his warm hand rested on hers, briefly, then withdrew. ‘I understand. There are ethical questions. To be entirely honest,’ he sighed, ‘I have never got involved with anyone like this, before. I haven’t even had a girlfriend since my divorce, Jess. I was a monk in the desert! Then you walked in to the laboratory…’ He smiled, earnest and affectionate. ‘But please, do trust me, I can detach our relationship from the science. I promise. Now tell me your theory.’
Jess cleared her throat. ‘For what it’s worth, I now believe that, in opposition to our accepted understanding, virtually all the representation on Moche ceramics and in their murals are essentially depictions of real events. Not just the sacrifice ceremony. All of them.’
Dan stared at her. ‘And what makes you think this?’
‘The bone in the ankle at the Sorcerer.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You know it. El Brujo. The human bone, in the mural of the ankle?’
Dan nodded.
‘Ah. Yes. And so?’
