*
The flight into Melbourne, Australia, touched down early in the morning.
Quayle had asked Kirov for a pair of eyes and a fast hand to keep an eye on Holly, and the young Soviet trailed her as he had been trained. A man had flown down from the Soviet Embassy in Canberra and handed over a firearm in the toilets without seeing Quayle and Holly, and within an hour they were driving towards Geelong and the school where Teddy Morton had spent his last days.
Holly was quiet as they drove, seemingly uncomfortable with the prospect of visiting the place where her father died. The windows were down and the dry warm air was blowing her hair back. Quayle’s one concession to security was allowing her to sit in the front while her bodyguard sat in the back.
The school was built facing the bay at Corio, the main facility built of red brick with creepers growing up the walls and a quadrangle that was surrounded in as much history as the young country could offer. On either side, buildings stretched along a clean swept road that separated the main school from the sports fields. The grounds sprawled with contempt for land values along the shoreline and back into what was once farm land, with wide streets of staff housing, annexes, old halls and a sanatorium. Quayle stopped at a crossroads to get his bearings before turning left, slowing down to let a group of boys lugging bags of books cross the road in front of them.
“Why here, Ti?” Holly asked. “I mean, of all the places he could have put it?”
A short fat boy bounced across after the main group and, as someone shouted at him to hurry up, he gleefully extended two fingers at the group. Then, suddenly realizing that perhaps the car contained somebody’s parents, he grinned at Quayle, hoping that he was eminently forgettable.
“He was still working on it. When he began the file he probably knew he was coming here, and he knew he would finish it here. That’s why he chose to take the name from Vitae Lampada. Broken Square. The school. Play up and all that. He left a teaser with Gabriella Kreski. Drake’s Drum. He knew.”
“What now?” she asked softly.
“The house,” he said. “But… you don’t have to come.”
“No,” she said softly. “I’ll come.”
Quayle wound down the window and hooked a finger at the boy. Realising he was caught, the lad trudged miserably across as his friends guffawed from the pavement.
“What’s your name?” Quayle asked.
“Phillips, sir. John Phillips, sir. Sir, I didn’t mean it. I just..”
“Relax, John Phillips Sir,” Quayle said. “I just need directions.”
“Oh!” He brightened up immediately, pushing his glasses up his nose and dropping his books to pull up his socks. “Where to, sir?”
“The administrators’ office.”
“Back down the road to the first left, past the Head’s house and round to the left again. Then you’ll have the main field on your right. Scroggy’s’s office...” He grinned again and, when Holly did too, he thought he may have gotten away with it. “Sorry, I mean Mr Mortimer’s office is in the main Quadrangle. You’ll know it by the clock tower. Cars aren’t usually allowed. Well, except for parents...” he trailed off seriously.
“I suspect we shall be alright,” Quayle said equally seriously. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” the boy said. He bent to pick up his books as Quayle edged round and drove back the way they had come.
Three minutes later, they were parked in front of the main quadrangle.
“Not here please,” the young Soviet said in German. “The wall is too close. I want a clear area.”
You want a killing field, Quayle thought, but that’s what you’re here for. So he moved the car to the playing field side of the road.
As he clambered out, he looked back at the man and caught his eye. He had a light coat over his lap. Quayle knew that beneath it was his firearm and, as he stepped clear of the car, the soldier nodded just once. Go and do what you have to do, he seemed to be saying. She is safe.
The office was down one of the long airy edges of the quad, and Quayle pushed back the old heavy door. As it swung back noiselessly, a woman looked up over her horn rimmed glasses from her desk.
“I’d like to see Scroggy,” Quayle said, unable to remember the name the boy had given him.
The woman laughed delightedly and pointed to a second door. “Mr Mortimer is in, please go through.”
Inside, a tall owlish individual stood behind a desk that was covered in neat stacks of papers, with a personal computer dead centre.
“Come in, come in. I’m Mortimer. Welcome. Are you a parent?”
Reaching for a pipe in amongst the clutter, he began patting his pockets, looking for his tobacco. “Damn and blast, where is the wretched thing? Ah there, yes, jolly good!”
He began filling the pipe and looked up again smiling. “What can we do for you?”
Quayle smiled too. Teddy would have loved it here. Tousled academia, bright minds unconcerned with trivia, classrooms filled with chalk dust and hope, history and heritage.
“My name is Arnold,” he lied. “Have you been here long?”
“Fifteen years. Seems like yesterday that I arrived.” He lit a match, held it to the pipe and began to draw the flame in, great gouts of smoke puffing up.
“I knew Edward Morton rather well,” Quayle said. Mortimer looked up then, his eyes serious for a second or two, and Quayle continued, “I’m travelling with his daughter, in fact. We were wondering if we could see
