day. That is, it had been sunny but cool and most people had been glad it wasn’t raining. He had only been in the church for a few minutes but in that time the sun seemed to have intensified. And the sky was the wrong colour. It was a vivid, Mediterranean blue. All the clouds had disappeared.
And that wasn’t the only thing that was wrong.
Matt hadn’t been sure what he would find on the other side of the door. He had been half expecting to step back out into Moore Street. Instead he was in a cloister, a covered walkway forming a square around a courtyard with a fountain in the middle. Well, there was nothing surprising about that. Lots of churches had cloisters. It was where the priests went to walk and to think about their next sermon or whatever.
But this cloister was completely different from the church. It looked older – and more beautiful. The pillars of the arches were more ornate. And the fountain was really lovely, carved from some sort of white stone, with crystal-clear water splashing down from one basin to another. Matt knew almost nothing about art or architecture but even he could see that there was something about the fountain that wasn’t quite English. The same was true of the whole cloister. He cast his eyes from the perfectly mown grass to the brilliant flowers tumbling out of huge terracotta pots. How could a church as shabby and as neglected as St Meredith’s have managed to hold on to a courtyard as perfect as this?
He looked back at the church he’d just left. And that was another thing. Was he going mad or was the brickwork somehow different on the outside? There was a square tower rising up above him but no sign of a steeple, modern or otherwise. Well, perhaps it was hidden by the angle of the wall. But even so, Matt had to fight to stop himself thinking an absurd thought.
This was a completely different building from the one he’d just come out of.
No.
It was some sort of illusion. William Morton was deliberately trying to trick him.
The bookseller had told him to bring something back with him. It didn’t matter what and he didn’t care. All Matt wanted to do was to get out of here, to get back onto familiar ground. He walked forward and plucked a bright, mauve flower from one of the pots. He felt stupid, holding a flower, but he couldn’t see anything else and he didn’t want to spend any more time here searching. He turned round and was about to walk back when someone stepped in front of him. It was a young man, dressed in a brown robe. A monk.
And there was Matt, in his jeans and hooded sweatshirt, caught picking flowers in the middle of the cloister.
“Hi!” Matt didn’t know what to say. He held up the flower. “I was told to get this. It’s for a friend.”
The monk spoke to him. But not in English. Listening to the strange language, Matt thought it might be Spanish or Italian. The monk didn’t sound angry. He was trying to be friendly – although he was obviously puzzled.
“Do you speak English?” Matt asked.
The monk held up a finger and a thumb, almost touching. The universal symbol for “a little”.
“I have to go,” Matt said. He pointed at the door. “I have a friend…”
The monk didn’t try to stop him. Matt opened the door and went through.
He was back in St Meredith’s.
But William Morton wasn’t there.
Matt looked around, feeling increasingly foolish with the flower in his hand. It seemed that the bookseller had been playing a trick on him. While Matt had been out in the cloister, Morton had made his getaway. He had never intended to hand over the diary. It was all for nothing.
And then the woman screamed.
She screamed once, her voice so loud and high-pitched that surely it must have been heard all over Shoreditch. The scream flew up into the church, to be joined by a second and then a third, each scream becoming an echo of the other. Matt turned and saw her, an old woman wrapped up in black, standing a few metres away, pointing. At the same time, he saw the blood on the cold, stone floor.
He ran forward.
William Morton was lying on his back, one hand clamped to his stomach, trying to hold shut the wound made by the knife. There was a lot of blood. At first Matt thought he must be dead. The woman was still screaming. None of the other worshippers had come near, although Matt could hear them whispering, murmuring, afraid to show themselves. Then the bookseller opened his eyes and saw Matt, saw what Matt was holding. Despite everything, he smiled to himself. It was as if Matt had brought flowers to the funeral he was about to have.
“You are…” he began.
Just two words. Then he died.
At the same time, the doors were flung open and half a dozen men ran in. Matt looked up and saw police uniforms. So the Nexus hadn’t been lying to him. There really had been a protective ring around the church. It was just that it hadn’t worked. The police had arrived too late.
He was surrounded. More people were screaming. The police were trying to keep them back. Other officers came through the door. Matt recognized one of them. It was the Assistant Commissioner. He looked grim.
Richard Cole arrived a few minutes later, bursting in with Fabian. By now the body had been covered. The congregation had left. More policemen had come. Matt was sitting on his own, holding the flower, which had already begun to wilt. He was very still. There was blood on one of his trainers.
“Are you OK?” Richard asked. His face was filled with horror.
“Yeah. Sure.” Matt wondered if he was in shock. He didn’t feel anything. “I didn’t get the diary,” he said. “Whoever killed him took it.”
“How did they know he was here?” Fabian muttered. “Nobody knew about the meeting. He told only us.”
“Somebody knew,” Matt said. He waved a hand in the direction of the dead man. “They took the diary. He had it with him when we met but just now I looked and it wasn’t there.”
“To hell with the diary,” Richard said. “You were with him. You could have been killed too.” He paused and frowned. “What happened?” he asked. “Did you see who it was?”
“No. I was out in the cloister. He made me get him this.” Matt held up the flower.
Now it was Fabian’s turn to look puzzled. “What cloister?” he asked.
“The church has a cloister,” Matt said. “Morton asked me to go there. He said it was some sort of test, but I think he was lying.”
“This church has no cloister,” Fabian said.
“It’s through there.” Matt looked in the direction of the door.
“Let’s go out,” Richard said. “You need some air.”
“There is no cloister,” Fabian insisted.
Angrily, Matt stood up and walked over to the door. “It’s through here,” he said.
He opened the door. And stopped dead.
There was no cloister on the other side. There were no flowers, no fountain and no monks. Instead, he found himself looking at an alleyway lined with dustbins and, on the other side, a grimy backyard filled with rubble and broken concrete.
He looked at the flower in his hand and then threw it down as if it were scalding him. It lay, floating in a puddle, the only colour in a world of grey.
DANGER AREA
In the end, it all seemed too easy.
Matt didn’t want any part of it. He would have liked to forget the Nexus, the Old Ones, William Morton, the diary, the second gate and all the other weird things that had somehow closed in on him and taken over his life. Certainly he had no great desire to visit Peru. And yet, here he was at midday, sitting on a British Airways jumbo jet on the runway at Heathrow Airport, on his way to Lima via Miami. Once again, he got the feeling that he hadn’t chosen to be here. It had just happened.
After the death of the bookseller at St Meredith’s church, there had been another meeting of the Nexus – and
