smoky and garlicky, a mixture of toasted sesame oil, roasted aubergine, and cumin with some other spices dancing around in the background. It was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. She dipped the bread back in the pot, and had just loaded it up again when her phone rang in her pocket. She stuffed the bread in her mouth and reached for it.
‘Hello,’ she said through a mouthful of food.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Rawls yelled down the phone. Liv groaned inwardly. She’d turned her phone on when she’d left the newspaper offices so the Ruinologist could contact her; she’d forgotten all about Rawls.
‘I’m worried sick over here,’ he hollered. ‘I just saw you on CNN getting bundled into the back of a police cruiser. What the hell’s going on over there?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Liv replied through a mouthful of food. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So why didn’t you call me? I told the girl at the office to get you to call me.’
‘Must’ve slipped her mind. She seemed a little ditzy.’
‘So tell me what’s going on.’
This was exactly the conversation she’d hoped to avoid. ‘I’m just trying to find out what happened to my brother,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.’
‘You sound out of breath.’
‘I am out of breath. I’m walking quickly up a really steep hill.’
‘Oh right. Well you still shouldn’t be wheezing that way. You need to look after yourself. You should quit smoking.’
Liv realized that, despite the high-stress situation she found herself in, she hadn’t craved a cigarette in hours. ‘I think I have,’ she said.
‘Good. That’s good. Listen, I need you to do one thing for me.’ Here it was. She’d known he couldn’t be calling out of overwhelming concern for her wellbeing. ‘Write down this number,’ he said.
‘Hold on.’ She grabbed her pen and scribbled the number on her hand.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked.
‘It’s that traffic cop you watched give birth to twins the other night.’
‘Bonnie?’
‘Yeah, Bonnie. Listen I know this is a real bad time, but I need that story to run this weekend. I still got a hole in the Lifestyle section, so I need you to call her up and smooth the way for someone else to pick up the story, OK?’
‘I’ll call her right now. Anything else?’
‘No, that’s it. Just you be careful — and take lots of notes.’ Liv smiled.
‘I’m always careful,’ she said. Then she hung up.
Rawls snapped his phone shut and closed his front door. He was late for a fundraiser over at City Hall and wanted to meet the guy everyone was tipping as the next mayor. It always paid to get close to the incoming king.
He slid behind the wheel of his Mustang, absolutely nothing to do with his midlife crisis, and was about to turn the key in the ignition when he heard the tap on the window. He turned and saw the wide muzzle of a gun pointing at him. The man who held it motioned for him to wind the window down. He was wearing some kind of red windcheater and had a beard that looked wrong on his young, thin face.
Rawls held his hands up and did as he was told. When the window was halfway down a large bottle of mineral water was pushed through the gap. ‘Hold this,’ the gunman said. Rawls took it. ‘What do you want?’ He noticed the fumy smell clinging to the plastic bottle and realized it didn’t contain water at all.
‘I want your silence,’ the man replied, and fired a piece of burning magnesium from the flare gun, through the bottle of turpentine and into Rawls Baker’s chest.
Chapter 91
Bonnie’s answer-phone kicked in just as Liv passed through the large stone arch leading to the square by the public church. Listening to the small-town voice politely asking her to leave a message whilst being confronted with the massive Gothic splendour of the church was a surreal experience.
‘Hey, Bonnie,’ she said, drifting across the square along with the hordes of tourists. ‘This is Liv Adamsen — from the
She emerged from the shadow, squinted up into the brightness — and stopped. There in front of her, rising up like a wall of darkness, was the Citadel. Seeing it this close was both terrifying and awe inspiring. Liv’s eyes lifted to the summit then dropped slowly down, following the path of her brother’s fall. As her gaze reached the bottom she saw a large crowd of people gathered next to a low stone wall. One of them, a woman with long blonde hair and a long dress, was holding her arms out by her sides. The sight sent ice spiders scuttling across Liv’s skin. For one awful moment she thought the ghost of her brother was standing there. The crowds of tourists bumped her as they pushed past, nudging her closer to the group, until she began to see a blaze of colour at the centre of the crowd. It was a sea of flowers, laid there by strangers and looking now as if they had seeped up through the broken flagstones and bloomed in silent tribute to the man who had cracked them. Liv’s eyes moved across them, reading hidden meanings in their colours and forms: yellow daffodils for respect, dark crimson roses for mourning, rosemary for remembrance, and snowdrops for hope. Cards stuck out here and there like the sails of boats half-sunk in a shallow sea. Liv picked one up and felt a cold finger run down her spine when she saw what was on it. There were two words ‘Mala Martyr’, and above them, filling the uppermost part of the card, was a large ‘T’.
‘Miss Adamsen?’
Liv whipped her head round, instinctively leaning away from the voice as her eyes sought the source of it.
Standing over her was a stylish woman in her fifties wearing a charcoal grey pinstripe suit a few shades darker than her precisely cut hair. She switched her gaze from Liv to the flowers stretching out on the ground behind her, then back again.
‘Dr Anata?’ Liv asked, rising up to greet her. The woman smiled and held out her hand. Liv shook it. ‘But how did you know it was me?’
‘I’ve just come from a television news studio,’ the woman said, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘And you, my dear, are very much breaking news.’
Liv glanced nervously across at the crowd. Their attention was currently split between the mountain and the spectacle of the silent woman holding her arms out. No one was looking at her.
‘Shall we go somewhere a little quieter?’ Dr Anata suggested, gesturing further along the embankment to where a small army of plastic tables spilled out from several cafes.
Liv looked back at the shrine marking the place where her brother had died, then nodded, and followed Miriam as she led her away.
The van pulled up by the wall of the old town close to the southern gate. Cornelius glanced at the screen. The arrow remained steady, pointing to a spot by the dry moat on the old embankment. The girl hadn’t moved for the last few minutes.
He slipped out of the passenger seat and held the door open. Kutlar closed the electronic notebook, handed it to Cornelius and slid stiffly across the seat to join him on the pavement. The drop down to the ground was not high but the moment his foot connected with the street it felt as if someone had shot him in the leg again. He gritted his teeth against the pain, determined not to appear weak; felt the sweat beading up beneath his shirt. He held on to the door to steady himself, his head drooping forward as he forced his leg to straighten. In his peripheral vision he could see Cornelius’s boots pointing in his direction. Waiting. There was no way he could do this on his own.
