Jack Pendragon - 02 - Borgia Ring Read online

  I had been in this room only once before; on the day a year earlier when, after completing my training, I was received into the Jesuit Order. This was the inner sanctum of the Head of the College, the Superior General, Claudius Acquaviva, fifth leader of the Jesuits. The Order was created almost sixty years earlier by the saintly Ignatius of Loyola who had taught us that the Jesuits were God’s chosen missionaries, our role to serve the great and mysterious purposes of the Lord God Almighty. Our Order had many jobs to perform, I was told, but none more important than the task of returning heretics to the One True Faith.

  The Superior General was a diminutive figure, seated at a massive desk in the centre of a vast room, studying some papers. He wore a simple black robe, a black cap on his head. A tall, slender man in priest’s robes stood in front of the desk, head lowered, hands clasped in front of him. I knew that back.

  Brother Giovanni slipped out and I walked slowly towards the desk. It was only when I stood alongside the other robed figure that I could steal a glance at the man. He did not return my stare, but I could see his strong profile in the dim light, his straight, long nose, the soft curve of his shaven skull. It was Sebastian – Father Sebastian Mountjoy – my closest friend at the college, a man who had been ordained on the same day as I. Sebastian, I knew, was aflame with the same religious fervour as I was, a fervour that consumed our waking thoughts and permeated our dreams. We had spent many hours together in spiritual contemplation and debate. Sebastian was three years my senior and came from a very wealthy Herefordshire family, committed Catholics who had long been engaged in their own clandestine work against the English Queen. But although our backgrounds were very different, we were spiritual twins.

  Superior General Acquaviva looked up from his papers. He was a gaunt, pale man and naturally bald. The skin of his high forehead was smooth, almost baby-like. It caught the light from the huge candles set on either side of his desk. He had very light brown eyes; soft, kindly eyes. He seemed to be about to speak when there was a movement behind his chair. A hooded figure emerged from the deep gloom, startling both Sebastian and me. The man approached the desk. The Superior General glanced up and the man pulled back his hood to reveal a hard face: high cheekbones, narrow black eyes, cropped silver hair.

  I fell to my knees. The figure extended one hand and flicked his fingers.

  ‘My sons,’ the Superior General interposed. ‘It was Father Bellarmino who called you here this morning.’

  I was terrified. Bellarmino was perhaps the most powerful man in the Church. Many believed he was more powerful even than Pope Sixtus himself. As both the Pope’s personal theologian and Spiritual Father of the Jesuit College, his influence reached into every corner of the Vatican. But Father Bellarmino was a great purifier with a fearsome reputation across Europe. He had brought many heretics back to the Faith at the point of a sword or through the purification of fire.

  ‘I will let the good Father explain,’ the Superior General concluded.

  Bellarmino’s voice was higher-pitched than I’d expected, but his delivery was that of a man who had long since lost any shred of self-doubt. A man who expected those he addressed to obey immediately, never to question him or to show anything but obsequiousness and sycophantism.

  ‘You are good and honest priests, and I know from your records and from the personal recommendations of the Superior General that you are dedicated to the notion of martyrdom,’ he began. ‘You came from England to be trained here and returned to your country, so that you may spread the Word of the One True Faith, act as missionaries and save souls.’

  I hardly dared blink and could sense Sebastian’s fear too in the rigid set of his body. In the candlelight, the black eyes of the Spiritual Father of the College were fathomless pools.

  ‘A missionary’s cause is a noble one. You are aware, as we all are, that many worthy men have been lost fighting this good fight. If you are recognised upon your return to England, you will be arrested immediately as traitors and may well meet a traitor’s death. But I know you are not afraid of this prospect. Rather, you relish the thought of laying down your life in the Lord’s work.

  ‘But some of us have concluded we might do more for England; that we might do more, much more, to save the souls of your compatriots. Some here have concluded that too many good men have died as martyrs, pouring more blood into the hands of the English whore who sits illegally on the throne. And so, we have decided to remove the evil … at its source.’

  And in that moment, I began to understand why we had been brought here. I quickly glanced at Sebastian, but did not catch his eye. Bellarmino was speaking again.

  ‘Your mission will be the most dangerous of any undertaken by the Order. From the moment you leave this building you will be spied upon, for enemies of the Church are everywhere. You will make for the tiny town of Créteil, a few miles south of Paris. You will find there a small tavern called Le Lapin Noir, close to the centre of the town. Seek out the landlord and tell him you are looking for Monsieur Gappair. Both the landlord and Gappair may be trusted. For the moment, you will assume the identity of English traders. We have prepared your papers and passports.’

  He paused for a moment and fixed us both with those unreadable black eyes. ‘There is one more thing.’ He removed a small box from inside his robe and opened the lid. Inside lay a gold ring topped with a large, round emerald. ‘You will need this,’ he said, and handed it to me.

  Stepney, Saturday 4 June, 10.00 a.m.

  Pendragon and Turner had reached ground level and were picking their way between rusty girders and piles of sand when an old Toyota Camry pulled on to the site and stopped a few metres away. A short, heavily built man, the dome of his huge head covered in grey stubble, stepped out of the driver’s seat. He carried a yellow hard hat in one hand.

  ‘I came as soon as I heard,’ he told them, extending his free hand.

  ‘Mr Ketteridge?’

  ‘Tony.’

  ‘DCI Pendragon. Sergeant Turner. You’re the site manager here, is that correct?’

  Beads of sweat had appeared on the man’s forehead. He had dark rings under his eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What exactly have you been told?’

  ‘About Amal? He’s dead. Dreadful. Do you know anything more?’

  ‘It seems clear the man was attacked and killed in a neighbouring property.’

  ‘Christ!’ Ketteridge looked skyward.

  ‘Had Mr Karim been a security guard here for long?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t really a guard as such, just one of the construction team. Volunteered for a bit of overtime.’ Ketteridge wiped away the sweat that was now trickling down his cheeks. ‘We usually just rely on the security cameras, but it was the skeleton …’

  ‘Skeleton?’ Pendragon snapped.

  ‘You haven’t been down there yet then?’

  ‘Yes, we have, but there was no skeleton.’ Pendragon turned to Turner who simply shrugged his shoulders.

  Ketteridge donned his hard hat and stepped between the two policemen, taking the sloping path down into the pit. From several metres away it seemed he could tell something was wrong and began to pick up pace. By the time Pendragon and Turner had reached him, he was crouching down close to the cluster of flags.

  ‘This is crazy!’ he said, standing up and turning to face Pendragon.

  ‘I think you’d better start at the beginning,’ the DCI told him.

  They were in the site hut, a Portakabin fifty metres or so from the pit. Inside, the walls were covered with charts and plans and a calendar featuring an improbably endowed model resplendent in hard hat and nothing else. Ketteridge’s desk was strewn with papers, a calculator, empty mugs and chocolate wrappers. A computer surrounded by more papers stood on a separate desk close by. Beside it stood a printer and an A3 flatbed scanner.

  Pendragon paced around the room looking at the charts before going behind the desk and surveying the muddle on top of it. Ketteridge looked uncomfortable, standing with h
ands in pockets.

  ‘Okay, talk us through it,’ Pendragon ordered, and tapped at the keyboard of the computer to snap it out of sleep mode. Wallpaper of a tropical paradise appeared, speckled with at least fifty file names.

  ‘We were getting ready to close down for the day – must have been getting on for five – when one of the men called me over. He’d cleared some soil away at the bottom of the excavation and there were hip and thigh bones protruding from the mud. We dug away carefully and there it was – a full skeleton. It was very old.’

  Pendragon came back round the desk and began to pace again, then stopped a few feet away from Ketteridge. ‘And you didn’t report it?’

  The site manager looked sheepish. ‘Believe me, I was going to. I called my boss straight away. He was in a meeting.’

  ‘Who was with you?’ Pendragon asked, pulling a box file from a shelf and walking towards the desk with it. He perched on the edge and flicked through the file.

  ‘There’re sixteen men on the job. Only three were with me in the pit at the time. Oh, and Tim Middleton.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Partner in the architect’s firm responsible for the design.’

  Turner was taking all this down.

  ‘We’ll need a full list of names and addresses,’ Pendragon said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure what to do, and it was getting on. The guys were all exhausted … bastard of a week it’s been. Stifling. So I thought, well, the skeleton wasn’t going anywhere. Karim volunteered to do one shift guarding it, and one of the others said he would take over in the early-morning.’

  ‘I see.’ Pendragon closed the file and appraised the man before him.

  ‘There’s one other thing … there was a ring.’

  ‘A ring?’

  ‘On the skeleton’s right hand.’

  Pendragon stared at the man in disbelief. ‘And you just left it there? With one security guard to cover the whole site?’

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I needed to talk to my boss. Besides, we have CCTV.’

  ‘Oh, jolly good.’

  ‘I thought …’

  ‘No, Mr Ketteridge. You didn’t think at all.’

  There was a brief silence, the only sound the buzzing of a fly banging against the window.

  Ketteridge went behind his desk and opened a drawer. ‘You may find these useful,’ he said, and handed Pendragon a set of half a dozen photographs. ‘Tim Middleton took some snaps of the skeleton and e-mailed them over as soon as he got back to his office. I printed them out before I left the site last night. Then I checked on Amal Karim to see if he was still okay about pulling the night shift. He seemed fine … poor sod. I dunno, I got the feeling he was doing it out of a sense of duty, respect for the dead or something.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘I must admit, we were all a bit freaked out by it.’

  Pendragon studied the pictures. They were postcard-sized and taken from several different angles. The earth above the skeleton had been carefully removed and the area around it cut away, exposing the remains. The skeleton looked forlorn against the mud, a remnant from a different time, alien to this world. In one of the pictures a large gold ring topped with a green stone could clearly be seen on the little finger of the right hand.

  ‘Okay,’ Pendragon said, and shuffled the photographs together to take with him. Turning to Turner, he said. ‘Get the CCTV recordings and meet me at the car. And, Mr Ketteridge, keep your mobile charged. We’ll be in touch again … very soon.’

  The wall clock read 11.30 a.m. as Pendragon stepped up to a whiteboard at the open end of a horseshoe arrangement of desks. The briefing room was small and hot; an electric fan on a spindly stand whirred away in the far corner, but it was almost completely ineffectual. The entire team had gathered in the room. Sergeants Rosalind Mackleby, Jimmy Thatcher and Terry Vickers sat to one side, Inspectors Rob Grant and Ken Towers to the other. Directly in front of Pendragon, Jez Turner was perched on a desk. At the back of the room, close to the door, stood Superintendent Jill Hughes, arms folded across her chest.

  ‘Okay, a quick summary,’ Pendragon began, surveying the room. He showed no signs of the anxiety he felt inside. ‘You all know about the body found in the club. Identified as Amal Karim, an Indian labourer who was employed by Bridgeport Construction.’ He tapped a photograph of the man, a passport picture from a few years back, copied and enlarged. Next to this were photographs of the crime scene, the body sprawled on a concrete floor, one side of the face a mass of black and red. ‘Karim was struck twice, once to the throat and then to the skull. Both blows came from a heavy, blunt object, probably a piece of metal pipe.’ He indicated the injuries on the photograph as he spoke. ‘His body was dumped in a ventilation duct. Time of death between one-thirty and two-thirty this morning.

  ‘Sergeant Turner and I have just returned from the crime scene. Karim was involved in a struggle on a building site a short distance from the club. He was killed on the roof there, his body dumped in the duct. He’d been on night duty as a security guard at the site.’

  Inspector Grant’s hand went up. ‘Any idea of motive, guv? Anything valuable taken from the site?’

  ‘I was just coming to that. Dr Newman’s team have found a human bone close to where they think Karim was originally attacked.’

  ‘A bone?’

  ‘A finger bone, apparently. Very old.’

  ‘But that could be a coincidence, couldn’t it?’ Sergeant Mackleby asked. She was taller than half the men in the room, thin, with long auburn hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her pencil skirt and crisp white blouse accentuated her slender figure and also gave an impression of severity.

  ‘Fair question,’ Pendragon replied. ‘There’s a massive hole there, at least ten metres deep. Never know what might get dug up when you go that far down, but it’s nothing so simple in this case. We had a word with the site manager, Tony Ketteridge. Turns out they unearthed a skeleton there last night. That’s why Karim was keeping watch.’

  There was a stunned silence. Superintendent Hughes walked round the desks to where Pendragon was standing. ‘And all that’s left of it is this finger bone?’ She gave him an incredulous stare.

  ‘It would seem so,’ Pendragon replied, and handed her the photos Ketteridge had given him. ‘When the skeleton was dug up, one of the architects for the project was there, a …’ he glanced at a notebook in his hand ‘… Tim Middleton of Rainer and Partner. He took these pictures with his phone.’

  She studied them without a word, turning them round in her hands before passing them on to Jimmy Thatcher who was closest to her. ‘And they didn’t report it?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you think this guy Karim was killed because of the skeleton?’ It was Jimmy Thatcher who was talking. He had just passed the photos on to Mackleby. Terry Vickers was leaning over her shoulder to get a look.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Pendragon retorted. ‘Far too early to jump to conclusions.’

  ‘But it’s an odd coincidence,’ Hughes said, walking over to take a close look at the photograph of the security guard’s body. ‘Did this Tony Ketteridge give a valid reason for not reporting the find immediately? Does he realise he’s broken the law?’

  Pendragon shrugged. ‘Said he’d tried and failed to contact his boss. Thought it best to sleep on it first.’

  ‘Terrific!’

  ‘He kept reiterating the point that the skeleton was really old, ma’am,’ Turner interjected.

  ‘Oh, so that excuses him,’ Hughes said, rather louder than she had intended. Jimmy Thatcher straightened involuntarily. Grant coughed and crossed his arms over his chest.

  ‘Well, whatever his reasons, it was a bloody silly thing to do. Puts him right in the frame,’ she added.

  ‘Yes, but there’s no evidence. We can bring him in on a technicality, but I think the man would be more useful to us if we let his oversight go; played it softly with him. At least at first,’ said Pendragon.

  ‘An
d what’s this?’ Mackleby had the pictures again and was pointing at the ring on the skeleton’s hand.

  ‘It’s what it looks like. A ring,’ the DCI replied.

  ‘So, a motive then?’ Terry Vickers said.

  ‘Possibly.’

  Outside the briefing room, Pendragon told Turner to take a good look at the CCTV disks he had brought back from the construction site. Turning to Thatcher and Vickers he instructed them to lead a search team to sweep the area within a two-hundred-metre radius of the site.

  Superintendent Hughes tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Got a minute?’ She ushered him into her office and closed the door. ‘Quite a first morning.’

  ‘Nothing like going in at the deep end,’ he agreed and sat facing her across a remarkably neat desk. There was a Mac to one side; a silver-framed picture of a younger Superintendent Hughes in black gown and mortarboard sandwiched between beaming parents.

  ‘Any initial thoughts you’d like to share?’ she asked.

  He was silent for a moment as he glanced around the room. It was almost obsessively neat, not a scrap of paper or mote of dust visible; even the waste bin was empty and pristine.

  ‘I think Amal Karim was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ he said.

  ‘And this skeleton business?’

  ‘Is the key, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I’ve got Sergeant Turner on to the surveillance recordings and I’m going to see if Dr Jones has anything on the finger bone. Then I’ll interview the construction team, maybe the vic’s family.’

  Hughes was nodding. ‘You going to bring Ketteridge in?’

  ‘Later. Thought I’d let him stew a bit. If he’s involved, the more he mulls it over, the worse he’ll feel.’

  Superintendent Hughes put her fingers to her chin thoughtfully. ‘Fine. Well, you know my door is always open, Jack.’