“If the boy is there, then of course I will kill him too.”
ST MEREDITH’S
The church was beyond Shoreditch, in a forgotten backwater of London that really wasn’t likeyou are
London at all. At school, Matt had learned about the Blitz – when German bombers had destroyed great chunks of the city, particularly in the East End. What the teachers hadn’t told him was that the blank spaces and rubble had been replaced with modern, concrete office blocks, multistorey car parks, cheap, tacky shops and – cutting between them – wide, anonymous highways that carried an endless stream of traffic with a lot of noise but not a great deal of speed.
He had been brought here by taxi, dropped off at the end of Moore Street, which turned out to be a grubby lane running between a pub and a launderette. The church stood at the bottom end, looking sad and out of place. It had been bombed too. A new steeple had been added at some time in the last twenty years and it didn’t quite match the stone pillars and arched doorways below. St Meredith’s was surprisingly large and at one time must have been quite grand, standing at the centre of a thriving community. But the community had moved on and the church looked forlorn and slightly abandoned.
Once again, Matt wondered why the bookseller, William Morton, had chosen this place for their meeting. But at least they would have no difficulty recognizing each other. There were few people around – and certainly no sign of the hundred armed policeman that the Assistant Commissioner had promised. As Matt made his way down the lane, the door of the pub opened and a bearded man with a broken nose stepped unsteadily out. It was only twelve o’clock but he was already drunk. Or perhaps he was still hung over from the night before. Matt quickened his pace. There was a mobile phone in his pocket and Richard Cole was only a few minutes away if he needed help. Matt wasn’t afraid. He just wanted to get this over with and go back to ordinary life.
He walked up to the front door of the church, wondering if he would even be able to get in. The door was very solid and somehow gave the impression of being locked. He reached out and lifted the handle. It was cold and heavy in his hand. It turned reluctantly, with a creaking sound. The door swung open and Matt stepped forward, passing from bright daylight to a strange, shadow-filled interior. The sun was shut out. The sound of the traffic disappeared. Matt had left the door open but it swung closed behind him. The boom of the wood hitting the frame echoed through the empty space.
He was standing at the end of the nave, which stretched out to an altar some distance away. There were no electric lights in the church and the stained glass windows were either too dusty or too darkly coloured to let in any light. But there were about a thousand candles illuminating the way forward, flickering together in little crowds, gathered round the chapels and alcoves that lined the sides of the building. As Matt’s eyes got used to the gloom, he made out various figures, older men and women, kneeling in the pews or hunched up in front of the tombstones, looking like ghosts that had somehow drifted up from the catacombs below.
He swallowed. He was liking this less and less and he wished now that he had insisted on Richard coming with him. The journalist had wanted to, but Fabian and the other members of the Nexus had dissuaded him. Matt was to enter alone. That was what they had agreed with William Morton and if they broke faith, they may never see him again.
Matt looked around but there was no sign of the bookseller. He remembered the face he had seen on the DVD. At least he would know what he looked like when Morton chose to reveal himself. Where was he? Hiding somewhere in the shadows, perhaps. Well, that made sense. He would check that Matt was alone. If someone had come with him, there would be other ways out of the church. Morton could slip away without ever being seen.
Matt continued down towards the altar, passing a carved wooden pulpit shaped like an eagle. The priest would address the congregation from above its outspread wings. The walls of the church were lined with paintings. A saint shot full of arrows. Another broken on a wheel. A crucifixion. Why did religion have to be so dark and cruel?
As he arrived at the apse, just in front of the altar where the east and west wings of the church spread out, forming a cross, a man stood up and gestured to him. The man had been sitting in a pew, his head half hidden in his hands. Matt recognized him at once. He was overweight, with silver hair in tufts on either side of a round, bald head, ruddy cheeks and small, watery eyes. The man was wearing a crumpled suit and no tie. There was a package, wrapped in brown paper, in his hands.
“Matthew Freeman?” he asked.
“I’m Matt.” Matt never used his full name.
“You know who I am?”
“William Morton.”
The bookseller appeared to be a very different man from the one Matt had seen in the television interview. Something had cut through his arrogance and self-regard: both physically and mentally he seemed to have shrunk. Now that they were closer, Matt could see that he hadn’t shaved. Silver stubble was spreading across his cheeks and down to his neck. And he probably hadn’t changed his clothes in days. He smelled bad. He was sweating.
“You’re very young.” Morton blinked a couple of times. “You’re just a child.”
“What were you expecting?” Matt didn’t try to keep the annoyance out of his voice. He didn’t like being called a child. He still didn’t know what this was all about.
“They didn’t tell you?” Morton asked.
“They told me you had a book. A diary…” Matt glanced at the brown-paper package and Morton drew it closer to him, holding it more tightly. “Is that it?”
Morton didn’t answer.
“They said you wanted to meet me,” Matt went on. “They want to buy it from you.”
“I know what they want!” Morton glanced left and right. Suddenly he was suspicious. “You came here alone?” he hissed.
“Yes.”
“Come this way…”
Before Matt could say anything, Morton scurried along the length of the pew and began to move down the side of the church, leaving the other worshippers behind. Matt followed slowly. It occurred to him that the bookseller might be a little mad. But at the same time he knew it was worse than that. He thought back to the farmer, Tom Burgess, who had spoken to him outside the nuclear reactor at Lesser Malling and had later died. He had been just the same. As he walked into the darkness in the furthest corner of the church, Matt realized that William Morton was scared out of his wits.
Morton waited for him to catch up, then began to speak, the words tumbling over each other in a low gabble. There was nobody else around in this part of the church. Presumably that was why he had chosen it.
“I should never have bought the diary,” he said. “But I knew what it was, you see. I’d heard of the Old Ones. I knew a little of their history… not very much, of course. Nobody knew very much. But when I saw the diary in a market in Cordoba, I recognized it immediately. There were people who said it didn’t even exist. And many more who thought that the author – St Joseph of Cordoba – was mad. The Mad Monk. That’s what they called him.
“And there it was! Incredibly. Waiting for me to pick it up. The only written history of the Old Ones. Raven’s Gate. And the Five!” As he spoke this last word his eyes widened and he stared at Matt. “It was all there,” he went on. “The beginning of the world, our world. The first great war. It was only won by a trick…”
“Is that the diary, there?” Matt asked a second time. This was all moving too quickly for him.
“I thought it would be worth a fortune!” Morton whispered. “It’s what every bookseller dreams of… finding a first edition, or the only copy of a book that has been lost to the world. And this was much, much more than that. I went on television and I told everyone what I had in my hands. I boasted – and that was the most stupid mistake I could have made.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
Somewhere in the church, someone dropped a hymn-book. It fell to the floor with a thunderous echo and Morton’s eyes whipped round as if a shot had been fired. Matt could see the sinews bulging on the side of his neck. The bookseller looked as if he was on the edge of a heart attack. He waited a moment until everything was silent
