She squints at the open pages. ‘This is Greek?’
‘Not really. It is Greek but Greek backwards. The letters have reverse values to their English equivalents, so Omega represents A and so on.’ He reaches for a pen and on the edge of an old newspaper writes out ΜΥΣΩΛ ΨΩΞΥΗ. He hands it to Megan. ‘What do you think that says?’
‘Megan Baker.’
He looks spooked. ‘How do you know that? You barely looked at it.’
She smiles. ‘What else would you write? You’re trying to interest me, have me take a personal stake in understanding the language. So it follows that you would write something personal, and the only personal thing you know about me is my name.’ She turns the pages of the journal. ‘Why did your father do this? Why did he feel the need to write in a code that only you and he understood?’
Gideon is not completely sure. ‘So no one else could understand it?’
She weighs it up. ‘You write a diary because one day you want someone else to read it. People think otherwise but it’s true. If what your father has written is important, then he wanted you to read it and perhaps do something with it. Something he thought only you could do. Maybe he wanted you to translate and publish it?’
Gideon suspects publication is the last thing Nathaniel wanted. But her words have touched a nerve. ‘You think he wants me to approve of all this? Be a part of it?’
‘I don’t know. What is the “this” that you’re talking about? Why don’t you tell us?’
Over the next couple of hours he tries to. He reads them some of the important extracts he’s translated — about the Followers of the Sacreds, the powers of the stones, their roles as all-healing gods. He even discloses some details about his mother’s death, her fatal disease and Nathaniel’s fear that he may have inherited the condition.
Megan is not sure how to voice what’s on her mind without offending him. In the end she just comes out with it. ‘It is possible that your father was mentally ill.’ She tries to soften the blow. ‘He was a brilliant man. He could well have hidden something like that.’
‘He wasn’t mad,’ insists Gideon. ‘There’s a lot of truth in what he wrote.’
‘Provable truth?’ queries Jimmy.
Gideon gets up from his seat and goes to the window. He looks out over the lawns that his father walked. He feels uncomfortable having the police in the house, about discussing his father and his private life, but their scepticism gives him no choice. ‘When I was a kid, I was ill. Very ill. It was probably the start of the same disease that killed my mother.’ He looks back from the garden to the officers. ‘You know what my father did? He took me home from hospital and gave me a cold bath. A special bath that cured me. The water he sat and bathed me in was collected from Stonehenge. When I could walk again, he took me there and made me touch all of the stones, the giant sarsens and even the smaller bluestones. Since then I’ve had no trace of that disease. No illness. My health is remarkable. My skin and body recovers from cuts and bruises faster than anyone else’s that I know.’
Jimmy gives Megan a discreet but telling glance.
Gideon sees it. ‘I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m not.’ He returns to the table, reaches across it and takes Megan’s right hand. ‘You cut yourself, right? How long have you had that blue plaster on your finger?’
She looks at the dirty wrap. ‘I don’t know. Maybe a week. It was quite a deep cut.’
‘Look at my face.’ Gideon angles his jaw towards her. ‘You came to see me in hospital after I was assaulted. You saw the cuts and bruises. Do you see them now?’
She doesn’t.
‘What happened to the wound to my jaw that they wanted to put stitches in?’ He sees a flash of doubt in her eyes and tilts his chin. ‘And the split lip? Do you see any sign of it? Any trace at all?’
Megan’s heart races. She doesn’t. His skin is unmarked. Not even a scratch.
There’s a flash of triumph in Gideon’s eyes. ‘You still have a plaster on a little cut. From a week ago. Now tell me that my father was mad. Tell me that there is no truth in any of his writings.’
86
The top brass had a sleepless night. A call in the early hours turned the investigators’ lives upside down. A call from Caitlyn’s kidnappers.
By the time the Chief Constable and his team assemble in his office the story is already out. A tip-off, no doubt from inside the force. The world’s press is camped outside police HQ.
Commander Barney Gibson kicks off the emergency meeting. ‘At two a.m. a call was put through to the incident room. As a matter of routine it was recorded. I will play it for you in a moment. The call has been traced to a public telephone box. No surprise in that. Except this call box was not in England — it was in France.’ He waits for the significance to sink in. ‘It was made from a public box off Rue La Fayette almost in the centre of Paris. French police are at the scene and are looking for camera footage, but I’ll be very surprised if they find any. They’ll go over it for fingerprints or any other trace evidence that might match against our fingerprint or DNA databases.’
Hunt is anxious to move things on. Thom Lock has been informed and is on his way from his hotel. ‘Please play the tape, Barney.’
Gibson presses a digital recorder placed in the middle of the table. They hear a voice. Male. English. The sound quality is poor. ‘You’ve been expecting this call, we know you have. We have Caitlyn Lock and shortly you will hear our demands.’ A pause and a click. The girl’s voice floats eerily into the room. It’s low and sad. ‘My dad used to read to me. Every bedtime he’d sit beneath the quilt with me and read until I fell asleep.’ She laughs sadly. ‘He made up stories about a fairy princess called Kay and her adventures, and then …’ It’s clear she’s close to tears. ‘Then I’d fall asleep holding my daddy’s hand.’
Everyone around the conference table is a parent and the tape visibly distresses them. Caitlyn’s voice strums their nerves. ‘I don’t recall much about my mother. I guess I remember her tying yellow bows in my hair for my first day at school. Cos I hated the blue uniform. I remember making waffles with her at my grandma’s house. Almost every time we went round. And she used to sit me up on a cushion in her make-up room on the lot and have her own personal artist pretty me up.’
Gibson clicks off the recording. ‘Technicians are examining it and checking for authenticity. And Chief Constable, I believe you will be validating it with Vice President Lock this morning.’
‘I will. Thank you, Barney.’ Hunt turns to his press officer, Kate Mallory. ‘How widespread is the leak, Kate?’
‘Very, sir.’ She’s mid-thirties, balloon-faced with round glasses and straggly black hair. She slides copies of national newspapers across the conference table, her fingers black from print ink. ‘All the majors have it.’ The Mirror’s bold-print front-page headline screams: ‘France Now Key In Lock Case.’ The Sun leads with a giant screen-grab of Caitlyn in a bikini and just one word, Survivor?
Kate Mallory reads the first few lines of the Mirror article: ‘The search for kidnapped American beauty Caitlyn Lock, daughter of US Vice President Thom, sensationally switched to Paris last night as top British cops rushed to investigate a cross-channel call from her captors. Kidnappers made contact via a special line set up by the police for public information. The gang is understood to have played an Al-Qaeda style recording of Caitlyn, in which she revealed intimate details about herself, her father and her mother.’
‘Enough,’ calls Hunt. ‘For what it’s worth, I’ve put a call in to the editor to complain.’ He shrugs. ‘I guess we have little choice but to hold a news conference and answer their damned questions.’