Equinox

Monroe put his glass down and paced over to the new Mac that he had bought only the previous week. He gave the mouse a nudge and the computer snapped out of hibernation mode. Going to a search engine, he paused for a second or two, thinking back to his meeting with Laura and Philip at the police station the night before. What had Laura called that website? Then he remembered and, in two-finger style, he tapped in almanac.com

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Chapter 20

They were sitting in a room adjoining the Inner Chamber. It was a small room, a pocket of air encased in stone sixty feet beneath the Bodleian Library. The walls were smooth, the floor polished and with a large Khotan rug covering the centre of the space. On this stood a mahogany table bare except for a silk runner stretching the length of the table and spilling over the ends. The room was lit by two dozen candles in a metal chandelier suspended from the centre of the curved ceiling. Two men sat opposite each other.

'I'm extremely disappointed in you,' said the Master, his voice devoid of emotion.

The Acolyte, dressed in a cream linen Armani suit, wide-collared white shirt and a green-and-red-striped Louis Vuitton silk tie arranged in a Windsor knot and nestled close to his Adam's apple, was seated in an identical chair. He stared across the table separating him from the Master and felt the colour drain from his face. 'I was going to explain.'

'I'm glad.'

'I was disturbed at the house. Someone was there.'

The Master raised an eyebrow.

'It was not an easy procedure, Master. I did not want to make an error and time was pressing.'

'You have been trained well, no?’

'I heard a sound from downstairs. I thought the girl's parents were returning early. I was obviously wrong.'

'Yes, you were.'

'I had not completed the removal. I took the body into the garden, but that was not suitable. Then I noticed the mooring for the family's punt. It seemed appropriate.'

'But why did you then move the punt along the bank?'

The Acolyte took a deep breath. 'I had the woman arranged in the punt. I had removed her brain when the tether came loose and the punt started to move away from its mooring. I tried to stop it, but I realised that if I was to scramble along the bank or fall in I would disturb the scene too much. I could do nothing but let it go. It must have become stuck in the bank a short way from the house.' The Acolyte looked down at his perfectly manicured nails.

The Master considered the other man's handsome face. He thought how much younger than his years he looked. He had been lucky with his genes — high cheekbones, a well-shaped mouth and eyes so blue that he could have been wearing coloured contract lenses. 'You haven't heard, have you?' 'Heard what, Master?'

'Your mistake may yet have very serious consequences. Thames Valley CSI have found physical evidence close to the house on the river.'

'That's impossible. I. .'

'They have a partial print, as well as traces of leather and plastic'

The Acolyte shook his head. His eyes were ablaze with indignation.

'Did you check your protective suit before disposing of it?'

The Acolyte closed his eyes and let out a small sigh.

'Well?'

'No.'

'So, it is not impossible, then.'

Chapter 21

James Lightman's house was one of the finest in Oxford. Although he had come from a relatively ordinary background — his lawyer father and teacher mother had been intellectually solid but never wealthy — his deceased wife, Susanna Gatting, had been the only child of one of the most powerful and influential men in England, Lord Gatting. Once a Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Gatting had been able to trace his family and their vast fortune back to the time of George I.

Lightman's father-in-law had died almost twenty years earlier. Susanna's mother had succumbed to cancer two years before her daughter was killed; and, as a result, Lightman had inherited the Gatting billions. His four- storey Georgian house in North Oxford served as a city home while a staff of a dozen maintained the Gatting estate in Brill on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border.

'Three visits in one week, Laura? People will start to talk,' Lightman said.

Laura laughed and walked over to peck him on the cheek. 'Strictly business, I'm afraid, James.'

'How disappointing. Anyway, come into the study, dear girl.'

Laura sat down in one of a pair of old leather chairs close to a homely blaze burning in the fireplace. She had been disappointed at first when the front door was opened by Malcolm Bridges, the assistant whom she had first met a few days earlier at the library. He had asked her in politely enough but had seemed to resent the intrusion. Then James had emerged from his room, full of welcoming smiles and banter. Bridges had taken her coat and headed off quickly to the kitchen to make some tea.

'I thought your assistant worked just at the library,' Laura said.

'You don't like him, do you, Laura?'

'I didn't say that. I was just surprised to see him here.'

'There's nothing sinister about it, dear girl. He helps out here to earn some extra money. Malcolm's a post- doc research assistant.in the Psychology Department. He has a girlfriend and a potholing passion to support, apparently.' Lightman jabbed the burning logs with an ornate antique poker before settling back into the other chair a few feet from Laura. 'Anyway, I have a bone to pick with you.'

'Oh?'

'You weren't entirely honest with me the other day, were you?'

'What do you mean?'

'About the plot of your novel.'

'Yes, I'm sorry,' Laura said. 'I wasn't really telling a lie. I am planning a contemporary novel, but these recent murders were the inspiration. I should have been straight with you. I knew you would find out sooner or later.'

'To be honest, I don't usually take much notice of the news. I only heard about this because Malcolm happened to mention it this morning.'

'Well, that's good — because I need your help again.'

'Hah!' Lightman laughed. 'I always admired your cheek.'

'I thought that if the Chief Librarian at the Bodleian, and a world authority on ancient literature, couldn't help, who could?'

'You say all the right things, Laura. Cheek and charm — a deadly combination. So, what is it?'

'In the novel I want to build part of the plot around a mysterious document, an ancient manuscript, perhaps a Greek or Latin text that has something to do with the murders.'

'And you're basing this on something real?'

Laura paused for a moment and looked into the fire, watching the flames lap around the glowing logs. 'Well, that's really what I wanted to ask you. What is the likelihood of something like that turning up?'

Lightman was about to reply when Malcolm Bridges appeared with a tray and walked over to the fireplace.