‘The test results are negative. No disorders of any kind. Your man is the picture of perfect health.’ Professor Cooper sounds bored as she flicks through his file. ‘In fact, looking at his notes there’s been nothing wrong with Gideon Chase since he was a kid.’ There’s a long pause. The plastic tap-tap-tap of computer keys clacks down the line. ‘Well, I’m really not sure about the accuracy of what I’m reading.’ There’s surprise in her voice. ‘It seems he was misdiagnosed when he was young. There’s a record here of him having CLL, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.’
‘What is that exactly?’
‘CLL is an awful disease. Doesn’t usually show in people under forty. Must be in the family. It manifests when the production of blood cells malfunctions and the process gets out of control. The lymphocytes multiply too quickly, live too long. You end up with too many of them in the blood, then they fatally overwhelm the normal white cells, red cells and platelets in the bone marrow.’
Megan wants to make sure she fully understands. ‘But he doesn’t have this — he was misdiagnosed?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Hang on.’ There’s another pause while she scans the notes again. ‘I’m sure he was misdiagnosed but no one seems to have admitted that they did it. Most peculiar. It says he exhibited an advanced stage of the disease and needed preliminary treatment. Then months later his blood tested clear, just as it did when we screened him.’ She sounds exasperated. ‘It just doesn’t fit. Simply doesn’t fit at all. CLL is an incurable condition, it never just vanishes.’
‘And professor, you’re sure he is clear of it now?’
‘I have to be cautious. You can never say anything terminal has gone for ever, but looking at the file in front of me, I’d have to conclude that he no longer has the disease that he was previously diagnosed as being fatally ill with.’
Megan thanks her and hangs up. It’s not what she expected to find. Not at all. The medical records support Gideon’s unbelievable story about being cured because he was washed in water from the stones at the henge.
The next call that the DI makes secures the business trading records of David E. Smithsen. She follows with requests for his work and home telephone records and his credit card bills and bank account details.
From the deluge of documents that electronically floods in, Smithsen appears to be a successful, respectable builder and professional landscape gardener. Megan uses Google Maps to look at aerial and 3D images of his business premises and his house. The home is lavish, detached, probably an old farm that has been converted. At least five, maybe six bedrooms. Several extensions. She zooms in. A swimming pool cum gym by the look of it. Big fences all around. Electric gates and cameras. Somewhere in the region of five to six acres. She values the spread at around three million pounds. Minimum. Megan taps her computer keys. And it doesn’t look like he has any mortgage. In fact, no debts of any kind. A DVLC search shows he has a soft-top Porsche, presumably for his wife and a Bentley bearing his personal plate. Another click of the computer keys and she finds he has a cool million in the bank.
Smithsen’s business accounts look in order. He and his wife are directors of a limited company with an audited annual turnover of eleven million pounds and a profit of one and a half million. The income seems consistent with his lifestyle. She runs a criminal records check and it comes back squeaky clean. Not so much as a parking fine.
Everything is completely above board, but it doesn’t feel right. She must have missed something. Megan looks more closely at the mobile phone records. He has the latest 4G iPhone but hardly uses it. She goes line by line down the itemised call list and sees he has rung home on it, booked the same restaurant a few times and downloaded a couple of emails. A guy as successful and busy as he is should be showing high call usage. She goes back to his landline records and scrutinises them. They show a similar pattern of low activity. Either he is terrific at delegating and has everyone running around making calls and money for him. Or he has another phone. One that isn’t billed to his work or home addresses.
Megan is sure he’s running an off-the-shelf, pre-paid phone. No contract and no trace of owner. A ‘burner’, as street kids call it.
Why would a millionaire businessman do that when he’s already got a state-of-the-art iPhone? She leans back at her desk and smiles.
He’s keeping something secret. That’s why.
99
As he walks in the dying evening light towards the stones, Gideon tries to remember exactly when he came here last. Probably twenty years ago just after he’d fallen sick.
He is carrying his father’s ashes in a scatter tube chosen for the purpose and he feels sad and nostalgic. He looks out across the field and gathering mist and remembers how his father had held his hand and led him across the misty fields towards the towering stones.
Two decades on he experiences an echo of that fear. A reverberation of the anxiety he had felt when he was eight years old and he’d been left for a few moments in the midst of the giants. It had felt like eternity. The shadowy ghosts, as big as trees, closed in on him. Crowded him. Reached jagged hands out for him.
Gideon recalls it all. His father had spoken strangely that day. Talked about how there were things in life that he wouldn’t be able to fully understand but should respect. Like the moon. A goddess watching over him. A powerful force linked to his unconscious powers and the cyclic rhythms of life — human fertility, crop growth, the changing of the seasons. He was too young back then to understand it.
Gideon looks across the great sarsens and bluestones. He sees his father putting a hand on one in the middle of the circle and reaching out to him. Telling him that the soul of the universe was buried deep in this rock, protected and preserved for ever.
He hadn’t wanted to take his father’s hand but he did. It was frightening. Like a charge of electricity surging through two points. A crackling, blistering energy that bound them together. Then his father took him around the circle. Made him touch all the other stones. Pressed him against them and held him there as the current pulsed back and forth between stone and flesh.
‘Good evening.’
The voice startles him. Comes out of nowhere. He turns quickly.
It is his father.
For a split second that’s what he thinks. His heart is beating crazily. He gasps for breath. The man in front of him is of the same size and shape as his father. Probably a similar age. In the gathering mist the resemblance is unnerving.
The old man smiles. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay. I was miles away.’
The stranger steps nearer. He is now taller and broader than Gideon first thought and has short grey-white hair. His eyes are piercingly dark. ‘You shouldn’t be in here, you know. Access is by appointment only. You have to book in advance.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Gideon looks off towards the car park.
‘It’s all right. I don’t mind. What do you have there?’ The stranger nods towards the tube.
‘My father’s ashes. He wanted to be scattered here among the stones.’
The man gestures to the henge. ‘I imagine then, that this place meant a great deal to him?’
‘It did.’ Gideon glances at the nondescript tube. ‘He was an archaeologist and studied them in great detail. He thought the stones were magical. Maybe even sacred.’