David Leadbeater
The Bones Of Odin
DEDICATION
I would like to dedicate this book to my daughter,
Keira,
promises to keep,
and miles to go…
And to everyone who has ever supported me in my writing.
Part 1
I never meant to start a war…
ONE
The darkness exploded.
“This is it.” Matt Drake placed his eye over the view-finder and tried to ignore the spectacle, and capture the image, as an outlandishly clad model prowled along the cat-walk towards him.
Not easy. But he was a professional, or at least trying to be. No one ever said the transition from SAS soldier to civilian would be easy and he’d struggled through the last seven years, but photography seemed to be striking the right chord in him.
Especially tonight. The first model gave a wave and a haughty little smile, and then sashayed away amidst a din of music and cheering. Drake kept the camera clicking as Ben, his twenty-year-old lodger, began to shout in his ear.
“Programme says that was Milla Jankovich. I think I’ve heard of her! I quote ‘a chic Frey designer model’. Wow, is that Bridget Hall? Hard to say, under all that Viking gear.”
Drake ignored the commentary and stayed on his game, partly because he wasn’t sure if his young friend was yanking his chain, so to speak. He captured the vivacious cat-walk images and the disparate play of light across the crowd. The models were decked out in Viking ensemble, carrying swords and shields, helmets and horns — retro costumes conceived by the internationally renowned designer, Abel Frey, who had weaved new season vogue with Nordic battledress to commemorate the evening.
Drake switched his attention to the head of the cat-walk and the object of tonight’s celebrations — a new-found relic ambitiously named ‘Odin’s Shield’. Recently discovered, to massive worldwide acclaim, the shield had already been hailed as the greatest find in Norse mythology and had actually been dated to before Viking history began.
Odd, said the experts.
The ensuing mystery was immense and intriguing and had captured the world’s attention. The Shield’s value had only increased when scientists joined the publicity circus after some unclassified element was discovered within its make-up.
Nerds coveting their fifteen minutes of fame, the cynical side of him spoke up. He shook it off. No matter how hard he fought against it, the cynicism that became a part of him when he was made a widower bloomed like a poisonous rose whenever he let his guard down.
Ben tugged at Drake’s arm, abruptly turning his artistic composition into a snap of the full moon.
“Whoops.” He laughed. “Sorry, Matt. This is pretty good. Apart from the music,… that’s shite. They could have hired my band for a few hundred quid. Can you believe that York landed something as awesome as this?”
Drake waved his camera in the air. “Truthfully? No.” He knew York’s city council with their decayed visions. The future is in the past, so they say. “But listen, York’s paying your landlord a fair few quid to take pictures of models, not The Sky At Night In September. And your band’s shite. So, chill.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Shite? The Wall Of Sleep are even now considering umm… multiple offers, my friend.”
“Just trying to focus on the nice models.” Drake was actually focused on the Shield, illuminated by the cat-walk lights. It was made up of two circles, the inner covered with what looked like ancient depictions of animals, the outer a mix-match of animal characters and symbols.
Very mystical, he thought. Great for the conspiracy fruit and nuts.
“Nice,” he whispered as a model walked by and he caught the contrast of youth against age on digital film.
The cat-walk had been quickly erected outside York’s renowned Yorvik Centre — a museum of Viking history — after Sweden’s Museum of National Antiquities granted a brief loan for early September. The importance of the event increased exponentially when superstar designer Abel Frey offered to fund a cat-walk event to kick-off the exhibition.
Another model stalked the makeshift tiles with an expression like a cat seeking its nightly bowl of cream. Airhead, the cynicism rose again. Here was a star-fucking paradigm, fated to appear in a future ‘celebrity’ reality TV programme, and be Tweeted and Facebooked about by a million beer-swilling, ten-a-day smoking morons.
Drake blinked. She was still someone’s daughter…
Spotlights rolled and raked the night sky. Bright light bounced from shop window to shop window, ruining what little artistic aura Drake was managing to muster. The distracting dance music of Cascada assaulted his ears. Christ, he thought. Bosnia had been easier on the senses than this.
The crowd swelled. Despite the job, he took a moment to scan the faces around him. Couples and families. Designer straights and gays, hoping for a glimpse of their idol. People in fancy dress, adding to a carnival atmosphere. He smiled. The watchful urge was admittedly duller these days — the army alertness wearing off — but he still felt some of the old perceptions. In a perverse sense they had gained strength since Alyson, his wife, died two years earlier after driving away from him, angry, heart-broken, stating that he might have quit the SAS but the SAS would never quit him. What the hell did that even mean?
Time had barely touched the pain.
Why did she crash? Was it a bad reflection on the road? Bad judgement? Tears in her eyes? Premeditated? An answer that would forever elude him; a terrible truth he would never know.
An old imperative snapped Drake back to the present. Something remembered from his army days — a distant thunk, thunk, long forgotten… old memories now… thunk….
Drake shook away the fog and focused on the cat-walk show. Two models were staging a mock battle beneath Odin’s Shield: nothing spectacular, just publicity fodder. The crowd cheered, the TV cameras whirred, and Drake clicked like a dervish.
And then he frowned. He lowered the camera. His soldier’s mind, lethargic but not decayed, picked up on that distant thunk, thunk again and questioned why the hell two army helicopters were approaching the event.
“Ben,” he said carefully, asking the only question he could think of, “during your research, did you hear about any surprise guests tonight?”
“Wow. I didn’t think you’d noticed that. Well, it was twittered that Kate Moss might show up.”
“Kate Moss?”
Two helicopters, the sound unmistakable to the trained ear. And not just helicopters. They were Apache attack choppers.
Then all hell broke loose.
The helicopters blasted overhead, circled around and began to hover in sync. The crowd cheered ecstatically, expecting something special. All eyes and cameras turned to the night sky.
Ben cried, “Woah…” but then his mobile rang. His parents and his sister called constantly and, a family boy with a heart of gold, he always answered.
Drake was used to the short family interludes. He scrutinized the helicopters’ positions, the fully-loaded rocket pods, the 30 millimetre Chain Gun visibly housed under the aircrafts’ forward fuselage, and assessed the situation. Shit…
The potential for utter chaos. The ecstatic crowd was crammed into a small square circled by shops with only three narrow exits. Ben and he only had one choice if… when… the crush came.