The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (122 page)

Unless…

He suddenly remembered. The slip of paper he’d found in Morgan’s blazer pocket. The grocery store receipt with the scribbled phone number. He’d completely forgotten about it, thinking it was unimportant. And maybe it was, but right now it seemed like the only scrap he had to go on.

But what had the number been? He struggled to bring it back. Forced his visual memory to cough it up. Nothing.

It was only when someone bumped into the back of him that he realised he’d stopped dead in the middle of the street. He stepped aside, muttering an apology.

He leaned against a railing. He felt sick, and it wasn’t just the after-effects of the tranquilliser drug. He watched as some pigeons strutted about the pavement, pecking in the dirt around a roadside tree.

Damn,
the number wouldn’t come. It had been a British landline number-that much he could remember. But when he tried to focus on it, all he could see was Zara’s face in his mind. The knife at her throat. Berg’s impassive gaze. Paxton’s little smile.

The roar of traffic seemed to fill his head, making it feel as though his thoughts were being dissolved in a swirling mess of confusion. He felt feverish with it. His mouth was dry, his heart rate was accelerated, his hands were shaking. He was falling apart.

Damn you, Hope. Get it together.

He walked on, eyes to the ground, fighting to bring the number back.

Nothing.

Then his feet reached the edge of the pavement. He looked up, and suddenly he knew where he was. He’d walked all the way up to the Place de la Trinité. Ahead of him across the busy square, nestling behind trees, was the dome of the Trinity church. It somehow seemed to beckon to him.

He crossed the square, walked up the steps to the entrance and went in. The inside of the church was cool and dark and rich with the pungent smell of incense. His footsteps echoed off the time-smoothed
flagstones and carried up to the vaulted ceiling as he made his way up the aisle and settled in a pew. The traffic rumble was far away. Diaphanous light filtered in through the stained glass windows. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, felt the serene atmosphere penetrate his senses, purge away the confusion and shine clarity into his thoughts.

He visualised himself in that stinking tenement building back in Cairo.

Finding Morgan’s blazer on the stoned-out girl with the angel tattoo.

Searching through the pockets back at Morgan’s flat.

Finding the crumpled piece of paper.

Reading the number.

Come on.

Reading the number.

Suddenly, it came to him. His heart jumped. He opened his eyes, grabbed a pen from his pocket and scribbled the number on the back of his hand.

He stared at it. Yes, it was right. He was sure of it. The area code was 01334, but he’d no idea where in the UK that was. Then there was the main body of the number, and then the three-digit extension, 345. That part had been easy to remember.

He stood up. Stronger now, somehow. More focused. Clearer.

He walked out of the church, leaving its cool serenity behind. The building was surrounded by pretty, well-tended gardens railed off from the street. The trees rustled lightly in the breeze, and little sparrows hopped across the lawns. Ben headed for an old wooden bench
under a gnarly oak. He sat down on the edge of it, took out his phone, glanced again at the number on his hand and punched it out on the keys.

After four rings his heart was already sinking. Maybe this wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Maybe the number meant nothing. If the junkie girl had been wearing the blazer for a few days, the piece of paper might have been hers. Doubts gripped him.

On the sixth ring, an answerphone cut in.

‘University of St Andrews. Faculty of History,’ said the female voice on the recorded message. She spoke with a lilting Scottish accent. ‘If you know the extension number you require, please enter it now. Otherwise, please hold for an operator.’

This didn’t sound like a contact a Cairo dopehead would have. Ben entered the extension and waited. Then swore under his breath as another answerphone kicked in after a couple of rings.

‘Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Dr Lawrence Kirby. I’m not around right now, so please leave your message—’

Ben killed the call before he got to the beep. So now he knew whose number he had. This was suddenly looking more promising. Maybe not much, but better than nothing.

Leaning back on the bench, he did an Internet search on ‘Dr Lawrence Kirby, St Andrews University’. His phone’s search engine took him straight to the Faculty of History website, where he found Kirby listed in the directory of staff members. He clicked on the name, and a thumbnail photo appeared with a two-line bio.
The picture showed a somewhat bemused-looking, pasty-faced individual who hadn’t shaved that morning. He had a wild shock of black hair, a tuft of it hanging down across his brow.

Ben gazed at it.
Is this fucker going to be any use to me
? he wondered.

He laid the phone down next to him and took out his cigarettes and lighter. Lit up, watched the smoke curl away on the wind and tried hard not to think of Zara. It didn’t work. He finished the cigarette and went straight into another. After a few minutes he snatched up the phone and dialled Kirby’s number again.

This time, there was no answerphone, and it kept ringing and ringing. Just as he was about to hang up, a man’s voice answered breathlessly, as though he’d been running to get the call.

‘Dr Kirby?’ Ben said.

‘Speaking,’ the voice panted.

‘Dr Lawrence Kirby?’

‘This is he,’ the voice replied jovially. ‘Who’s this?’

‘You don’t know me. I’m calling about Morgan Paxton.’

The phone went dead.

Ben swore. He tried again. This time, Kirby answered on the second ring.

‘We got cut off,’ Ben said.

‘No, we didn’t.’ Kirby didn’t sound so jovial any more. ‘I cut you off.’

‘Why did you do that? I was just trying to talk to you.’

‘I cut you off because I don’t know any Morgan Paxton.’

‘You remember his name pretty well, though.’

‘Listen, I don’t know who you are, or what you’re talking about,’ Kirby answered, sounding panicked. ‘You must have the wrong number.’

‘It’s the right number and, if you let me explain, you’ll understand why I need to talk to you. It’s important.’

There was a pause on the other end. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you. I don’t know who Morgan Paxton is.’ Kirby hung up again.

Ben turned off his phone.
OK, if that’s the way you want to play it, Kirby,
he thought. St Andrews. East coast of Scotland, just north of Edinburgh.

Fuck it.
He could be there in a few hours.

Ben hammered the Mini the fourteen miles northeast to Paris Roissy airport and got on the first plane bound for Edinburgh. After a short flight, he stepped down on Scottish soil. The air was colder and crisper than France, but he wasn’t interested in taking in his surroundings. At the Avis car rental outlet he picked out a Mercedes SLK two-seater sports that seemed about right for someone in the kind of hurry he was. Settling into the snug black leather interior, he entered his destination into the sat nav and hit the road fast and hard. Edinburgh shrank away quickly to nothing in his mirrors. He blasted across the giant suspension bridge spanning the Firth of Forth and carved northwards up the twisting A roads of the east coast until he reached St Andrews.

He vaguely remembered from his theology studies that the old university town had at one time been the religious capital of Scotland, steeped in the blood of butchered, tortured and burned martyrs. Its violent past was hard to imagine as he drove through the quiet streets, past ivied university buildings, cafés and hotels.
It didn’t take him long to locate the Faculty of History. He left the car and walked along a path overlooking the sea, with the ruins of the medieval cathedral behind him and the craggy remains of St Andrews castle and the coastline stretching out in a wide curve ahead in the distance. He filled his lungs with the fresh, salty air and tried hard, for the millionth time, to keep Zara from the foreground of his thoughts but knew it was impossible.

Arriving at the fine stone building that housed the Faculty of History, he walked in the iron gates, crossed a small car park and shoved through the front entrance into a large reception area. There was nobody at the desk. He glanced around him. A row of chairs, some historical prints framed on the wall, a broad staircase winding upwards. On a panel by the bottom of the stairs were the names of the academic staff with their room numbers and a little push-button LED that showed who was in. Ben ran his finger down the list until he found Kirby and a room number-42. The little light next to it was on.

He headed up the stairs, two at a time. A bunch of students were heading down, clutching books and folders, chatting among themselves. They glanced at him as he went by, and he ignored them. At the top of the stairs, a sign pointed right for rooms 21 to 45. He batted through a fire door and strode quickly up the narrow, neon-lit corridor. When he got to room 42 he checked the name-plate on the door: D
R
L
AWRENCE
K
IRBY’
.

Ben pushed in without knocking, and found himself
in a large office. The place was a chaotic sprawl, books and papers and yellowing crumpled copies of the
Guardian
everywhere, piled high on the desk, stacked in heaps on the floor. At the back of the room was a dusty window, and between it and the cluttered desk stood the man Ben instantly recognised from the Internet page as Lawrence Kirby.

Kirby had been in the middle of stuffing a huge book into a crammed, battered leather briefcase on his desk when Ben burst in. ‘Can’t you kn—’ he started. His voice trailed off, and he froze, staring at Ben. He was exactly like his photo, except maybe a little scruffier, and the unruly shock of black hair hung even lower over his brow.

Kirby dropped the book and walked out from behind the desk. He was wearing frayed cord trousers, his shirt was hanging out under his tweed sports jacket. He was a few pounds overweight and moved awkwardly. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. His eyes darted up and down, as though he were nervously sizing Ben up.

‘I’m the one you didn’t want to talk to on the phone,’ Ben said. ‘Remember?’ The draught from the opening of the door had blown some documents off the desk, and he stooped quickly to pick them up. The top one was a car insurance renewal form with Kirby’s name and home address on it. ‘You dropped these,’ he said, trying to keep his tone more friendly. He could see Kirby was rattled, and he didn’t want to seem a threat to the man. He laid the papers down on the desk and smiled.

‘I was just leaving,’ Kirby said abruptly.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘I told you, I have nothing to say to you,’ Kirby said, flushed. ‘I’d like you to leave.’

‘I came a very long way to talk to you, Dr Kirby. Just give me a few minutes. That’s all I ask, then I’m gone and you won’t see me again.’

‘I’m calling security.’ The historian made a grab for the phone that was half buried under the sea of paperwork on his desk.

‘Please don’t do that,’ Ben said.

Kirby’s hand stopped short of the phone. His eyes were round and staring. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘I’m not threatening you,’ Ben said. ‘You don’t have to be afraid. All I want is to ask you some questions about Morgan Paxton and the Akhenaten Project. I need to know what you know.’

‘Morgan’s dead,’ Kirby said.

‘I know that. And your number was in his pocket when he died. Were you and he working on the research together?’

Kirby swallowed. ‘His father sent you here, didn’t he?’

The mention of Harry Paxton brought a fresh image of Zara into Ben’s mind. He felt his blood rise. ‘No. I’m not working for Morgan’s father. I was in the army with him. And until two days ago, I thought he was my friend. I was wrong. When this is over, I’m going after him. But right now I need your help. I need it badly, Dr Kirby’

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘My name’s Ben Hope. And I’m not here to hurt you. Trust me.’

Kirby hesitated, frozen by indecision and nerves.

‘Please,’ Ben said.

Kirby stared at him a second longer, then stabbed a button on the phone keypad. ‘Security? This is Dr Lawrence Kirby. There’s an intruder in my office.’

There was nothing Ben could do to stop him. He could have taken the phone off him, or ripped the wire from the wall. But strong-arm tactics weren’t going to get him anywhere. He knew he had only seconds before security arrived and he needed to make the most of that time.

‘I know that Morgan was looking for treasure. I need to know where it is.’

‘That’s a surprise.’

‘I haven’t time to explain,’ Ben said. ‘How much do you know?’

But before Kirby could answer, the door flew open and two security guards walked in. The older one was craggy, hardened-looking, the white hair contrasting with his red nose and the thread veins on his cheeks. Maybe a former boxer. His companion couldn’t have been more than twenty. Not long in uniform, Ben thought. Itching for some action.

‘This man burst into my office and has been threatening me,’ Kirby said, pointing at Ben. ‘I want him removed.’

‘Let’s go, son,’ the older guard said, reaching for Ben’s arm. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’

‘I’m not bringing any,’ Ben said. ‘I just wanted to talk to him about something.’

Kirby grabbed his briefcase. ‘Well, I’ll leave it to you gentlemen to take care of He walked past Ben with
his eyes on the floor, breezed through the doorway and was gone.

‘You’ll have to come with us,’ the craggy guard said. ‘We have to take details from you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

The younger guard folded his arms. ‘That’s not what Dr Kirby said.’

‘I don’t give a shit what Dr Kirby said. I’m leaving now, and you’re going to let me.’

‘No chance, pal. You’re coming down to our office and we’re calling the police.’ He pronounced it ‘polis’.