‘North up Clerkenwell.’
‘He’s almost running, sir.’
‘Yes, he’s running’
‘Jesus, the snow!’
It was now coming thick and hard, almost horizontal, turning into a blizzard. A man could barely see more than five yards. A man could easily get lost.
Urgently, Ibsen pressed the speak button on his radio. ‘Team K. Can you see him? Kilo 1, do you have visual contact?
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Kilo 2?
Silence.
‘Kilo 2?
‘I think so sir… Yes, I can see him now. I think he’s doubling back, he’s changed his mind-’
‘Maybe he’s going for his motor, because of the weather. Larkham, get ready to follow in your car.’
Kilo 2 interrupted. ‘No. He’s heading down Goswell Road, not turning left-’ The signal crackled into lifelessness for a moment then, ‘Sir, I reckon he’s taking the Tube. Barbican Underground.’
‘Get on it! Christ. Kilo 1 and 2! Don’t let him get on that Tube without you!’
Ibsen slapped the dashboard in anger, his frustration intense. But for now, Ibsen just had to sit it out. They were down in the Tube, so he had radio silence, and no information. What was going on down there? Had they arrested him, lost him; had he spotted them on the Tube train; had he turned on the officers, shooting a gun, spraying a carriage, killing a kid with a ricocheted bullet? The silence was like waiting for a returning space mission to go through the atmosphere. Would anyone be alive at the end?
Ten minutes. Fifteen. Eighteen.
They had an armed response team ready, down the Pentonville Road. But that was a bit late if the guy was already culling infants on the Northern Line.
An efficient little crackle, like a throat clearing, brought the radio to life. ‘He’s up. We’re out. On the surface.’ It was Kilo 1. ‘We’re at the Angel, sir. Angel Tube.’
Just four stops away. Ibsen signalled to his driver. ‘OK, Kilo 1, Kilo 2, keep following him. We’re here for the whole ride.’
‘Sir. Walking up Upper Street.’
Kilo 2 kicked in, ‘He’s stopped, sir. By that weird low building
…’
‘Antique arcade.’ A more authoritative voice, crackled through. I’m just parked across Upper Street, sir. He’s stepping inside-’
Ibsen shot back, ‘Larkham? You’re there? How did you know?’
‘Took a guess, sir, followed the Northern Line overground north.’
‘Good man! But I know that place.’
‘Yes?’
‘If he goes in there we can lose him, a warren of old gaffs, all those lanes outside!’
‘He’s gone in.’
Ibsen barked, ‘Kilo 1 follow.’
‘I’m inside, can’t see him — wait…’ His pulse rate was now 125,
130
‘Kilo 1? Can you see him?’
Silence.
‘Kilo 2? Can you see him?
Silence.
‘Kilo 1? Fuck sake, Kilo 2?
A breathless voice. ‘He’s running, sir.’
Running?’
‘He’s sort of running, and — and these little alleys are filled with shoppers — all the snow — it’s chaos. Maybe he knows we’re here
…’ The policeman was panting. ‘I can just see him, the snow is so heavy, Sir… is that… wait… I can’t…’
They were going to lose him.
Ibsen waited for half a second. He waited for another half a second, Pulse maybe 140, 145, 150.
Kilo 1: ‘I’ve lost him. No visual contact. Repeat, no visual contact.’
‘Kilo 2?’
‘Me too. Lost him. Sorry, sir. The bloody snow…’
‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.’
Ibsen slapped the dash again. He had one last hope. His brilliant junior, the one man he could rely on, his go-to guy for not utterly fucking things up all the fucking time.
‘Larkham?’
‘Same here, sir. I got a glimpse. Then he just- You should see the snow, you can hardly see your own…’
Ibsen let the bitterness seep into his conscience for another half a second, then switched into a more professional gear. ‘So he’s gone to ground. But he’s somewhere around. Who saw him last, and where, precisely?’
Kilo 1 answered: the antique parade; Kilo 2 agreed. Then Larkham said, ‘Think it was me who saw him last. He was jogging up Islington Green. Just a glimpse, through the snow. I could see his head, then nothing.’
Ibsen closed his eyes for a second. Repressing his anger and guilt. ‘Just stay there, patrol discreetly, and keep your eyes open, we might just get lucky again.’
Ibsen knew they weren’t going to get lucky. The suspect’s last movements were all too indicative of a professional criminal who was aware he was being followed. He watched the delicate star-clusters of snow fall and melt on his windscreen, in prolificity and profusion; like lemmings, killing themselves on his glass, and melting into nothing. Suicidal snow.
The driver pierced the silence, jolting Ibsen from his reverie.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘I’m fine. Bloody furious, but otherwise fine. So we lost him. We still have a lead. He must have had a reason to come here in the first place What is it? Why has he come to Islington?
27
Temple, London
From Temple Station they walked briskly up a steep narrow street lined with venerable buildings, made somehow more scholarly — and picturesque — by their new, white, lawyerly wigs of snow.
They were at the Temple Church, an eight-hundred-year-old survivor. It looked impossibly beautiful and quaint, the arched windows and golden buttresses surrounded by Christmas Carolly scenes of snowbound gardens, and liveried beadles, and eighteenth-century doors decorated with green wreaths of berried holly.
Nina opened her rucksack with shivering hands and recited: ‘“The London Temple was one of the three administrative centres of the entire Order, along with the Paris Temple and their headquarters in Jerusalem. All the Templars’ British wealth was held here, in the London Preceptory, in a treasury so renowned for security that the English king stored the Crown Jewels herein.”’
Adam said nothing. A face was peering at him from behind a large sash window. The curtain fell.
Nina went on. ‘“At the time of the Templars’ fall from power, this reputation for hidden wealth gave rise to
