The Serpent Papers (27 page)

Here, before me, I connect the missing pieces of a primary, crucial mistake.

I would have told them. Had I been there. ‘I would have said: ‘You are scrambling in the dark. You are refusing to see what is in front of your nose.’ I visit Llull’s tomb every now and then. Out of curiosity more than anything else.

To understand what he was not.

* * *

Emily directs me back to the past. In the small office, seated with an increasingly glum Inspector Fabregat, Professor Guifré drones on about the medieval period that informed the creation of Llull’s work. For the most part, Emily is silent, studying the markings on the paper. She reads every document carefully, making notes on a small pad she produces from her briefcase and a blunt pencil with a chewed eraser. Finally, after receiving a permissive nod from Guifré, she speaks with confidence, her dress flowing in brown pleats about her knees.

‘Well . . . You see these rings – they’re not circles, they’re wheels – if you imagine the circular figures as three-dimensional you would have something reminiscent of a compass, separate dials spinning on an axis kept on a flat plane – that’s what the writer’s given you, a machine of changes as it were. And each of these letters – here you have
K B E H C F I D G
 – they will have multiple meanings within the same family of extremes. Spin the wheels, and the letters and numbers will align to form combinations with systematized meanings. A coded language, Inspector. Look at the letters. In Llull’s case he invented a nine-letter alphabet with each letter representing a family of words.’

Emily’s American accent cuts through the Latin: ‘Here you have B for Boniface, C for Magnitudo, D for Eternitas, E for Potestas, F for Sapientia, G for Voluntas, H for Virtus, I for Veritas, and K for Glorias. In a nutshell: God and everything created in his universe are formed of:
Goodness, Greatness, Eternity, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue, Truth and Glory.
In essence, Llull built one of the earliest versions of a programming language. What academics now consider a medieval truth machine. Sadly, he never had the technology to fully realize his plans.’

Fabregat nods. ‘And what is that?’

‘A chart of symbols.’ Guifré’s voice swoons across the room. ‘Engineered to answer any question in the world – a book to rival the Bible, to unravel the workings of the dogmatic Church, a logic system incapable of being marred by human deception. The true voice of God on earth, the unadulterated mathematics of the cosmos, the genesis of the computer.’

Fabregat coughed. ‘How would you use the circle to ask questions?’

‘Each letter of BCDEFGHIK is also representative of a query word, like ‘What?’ or ‘Where?’. So you can ask a question in a three-letter combination where the middle word denotes a question.’

‘Sounds fucking complicated.’

‘It is.’ Guifré pauses, unsteady. ‘But no more so than the language programmers use today. You ask a question of the system, and – if you imagine this diagram as a machine – you would then spin the wheels. A combination of numbers and letters is produced by this action, and the question is answered in the combination. This answer will consist of a limited number of variables (the nine-letter alphabet), which in turn produces a logical order of meaning in the letter–number combination. Basic tautology, Inspector Fabregat, before such notions had been articulated systematically.’

‘You’re telling me it produces a legible code?’

‘A language, Inspector Fabregat. A divine infallible language. What you have in front of you is taken from the embryo of modern computer science. A total logic system. In this, Ramon Llull’s work was groundbreaking.’

The inspector pulls a cigarette out of the case in his pocket and lights up, facing the projection of the figures. ‘I’m here for facts. Do we have anything in here that can help us find an author?’

Professor Guifré makes a series of exasperated humming noises. He retracts his neck, causing a treble chin to appear at the base of his throat, and warbles: ‘Believe what you wish to believe. As I have mentioned, the poetry must be understood in relation to the charts before we may begin to understand their full import! Most certainly they are bizarre.’

Fabregat’s eyes narrow. ‘Meaning?’

‘We don’t know why these were written or how they came to you. If he signed with a name or some script – perhaps we would know. To be sure, he is a Catholic and an educated calligrapher. This alone we can deduce from these papers . . . with caution. Correct me if I’m wrong, but one would be horrified if a false translation occurred . . .’

Fabregat’s voice breaks on the air. ‘Gordito! I love you but I don’t have time for this. For God’s sake tell me what it means, or if you can’t . . . God damn it, if you can’t, I also need to know!’

He kicks the coffee table in a fit. Guifré huffs to himself, then offers to pour another cup of coffee. Fabregat declines. Guifré checks the clock on his office desk.

‘I’m sorry, Gordito,’ the inspector says, mollified.

Guifré smacks his lips sternly. ‘Your cryptologist has been in touch for any sign of a classic cipher . . . but I’m afraid that at the moment there is none. The lines of poetry are gibberish, gobbledygook! They are mad! I suggest you take them to a psychologist rather than a medievalist. The trouble is . . . this arrangement of information. It is perplexing in its presumption of meaning.’

Fabregat blinks. ‘Its presumption of
what
?’

‘Meaning.’ Guifré points to the text on his screen as if this were obvious. ‘The levels of layering suggest that the letters are intended to be analysed by an initiate, someone who would understand the verses immediately, and whose understanding would be vastly illuminated by the proximity of that poetry to these charts.’

‘So why would a murderer send them to me?’

‘Ah! You have hit upon the problem, sir. That is the question! What you have is a mystery, Inspector.’ Guifré bellows as he heaves his bulk across the room. ‘A true and portentous mystery! Extraordinary! Most extraordinary. Should you give us a year or two, I’m sure we would have it, it’s just that in the constraints of a morning . . . Time, Inspector, is a costly commodity . . .’

‘A year or
two
?’ Fabregat explodes, launching into a string of expletives.

‘Clearly we can help you no more.’ Guifré switches off the projections. ‘And now it is lunch. Will you join us, Inspector? The café is magnificent, you may have a glorious soup and, should it tickle you,
croquetas
! My God,
croquetas
of Catalonia’s finest. It is a veritable delight to sup here – nothing like the halls of Oxford but a delight nonetheless!’

Fabregat collects himself, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief before standing to shake the professor’s hand.

‘Come now, Inspector. Take heart! We’ll send you any thoughts.’ Guifré clutches Fabregat’s hand in his bearlike paws. ‘Emily will be doing a bit more work on this – won’t you? But for now, it remains a mystery. A dreadful, dreadful mystery.’

Emily stands to say goodbye, her long skirt falling to the ground. Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She reaches for it, sees the message, then stops herself. Fabregat holds her eyes firmly in his. Goosebumps on her wrists, he notices, looking down, and then returns his eyes to her face.

‘Everything alright, Miss Sharp?’ Fabregat asks.

Apologizing for the interruption, Emily excuses herself. When the office door closes behind her, she checks the message again. And then she runs. She runs out of the library, pushing through the stiles, past the library docents who tut-tut behind her. She runs into the street and out across the park, adrenaline pounding through her body, muscles burning into muscles, her feet sending her flying forward, racing against time.

* * *

In the office Emily Sharp drifts. She floats on air.

‘You knew him well, didn’t you?’ I ask softly.
A strange coincidence.

‘Adrià?’ she murmurs, playing with the cap of a pen on her desk. ‘I knew him as well as you know any person you live with.’

Her gimlet eyes make me uncomfortable.

‘Are you trying to write some pattern of logic into this?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘How many other people are you speaking to?’

‘For the moment? Just you.’

‘Why?’

‘I thought you might have some insight into his character.’

‘His character?’ She examines her fingernails. ‘There’s always been a lot of debate . . . Did he do it, did he not do it? You get tired of being asked. It used to keep me up at night . . .’ She worries the top buttons of her shirt. I sense the freshness on her voice.
Reach out to her.
The colour rises to Emily’s cheeks. She pours another cup of coffee. Her eyes focus on some vague body sitting in the foreground between us. She is thinking. ‘What can you tell me about that day?’ I ask.
Start at the beginning.
What is your beginning? Your beginning and yours alone. That’s what I’m looking for. Your first memory.
We talk openly. I smile, and take notes. And then something interesting happens. I ask a question which connotes intimacy. She steps over a line. Here is a trick: confession is addictive. If you have kept a secret for a long time, the first moment you divulge it, a knot of adrenaline explodes in your stomach and every word that trips out of your mouth is a sensual burst of serotonin. That is, if you are dealing with somebody honest. Never assume this is the case.

At 13.27 on that self-same Friday, 20 June, seventy-two hours before his disappearance, Adrià Daedalus Sorra, man-about-town, disc jockey and student of philosophy, careened up the stairs with his skateboard. When he reached the blue door on the second floor he slung the board off his shoulder and slammed it into the handle, shattering the wood. He slammed the door again. His board snapped in two pieces, which he threw behind him, clattering down the stairs. Adrià rammed his shoulder against the door, banging it twice, then hurled the weight of his body against the lock.

‘Núria!’ he screamed. ‘Núria!’

He beat the door with his fist.

In the living room, Núria huddled on the floor crying. The bay windows onto Passeig del Born were open. The day was warm and the buzz of the crowd below crept up through the windows, winding into the curtains. A little band of students played music at the base of the church beyond Núria’s window, and in the street, people were clapping and laughing. A fly hummed lazily through the window and hovered near Núria’s left ear.

She sobbed uncontrollably into the floor, pulling her knees up into her chest. Down in the street below, on the black stone steps at the rear entrance of the Gothic Santa Maria del Mar, a woman sang, accompanied by the tinny student orchestra. The song was obscure, little known outside the local community. But through her tears, Núria-La-Catalana, Núria-from-Barcelona, recognized it instantly: ‘
Se’n Va Anar
’. Written by Salomé for the Festival de la Cançó Mediterrània in 1963, under Franco. Núria choked on her tears and cried harder.

‘Let me in!’ screamed Adrià. ‘Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!’

Blue paint peeling as the door shuddered.

The woman’s voice seeped into the room.

I hate him.
Núria’s mouth tightened. Adrià’s fist pounds on the door.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.

Twelve months earlier, Núria Sorra lost an apartment in the Gothic due to her brother’s unbridled debauchery and she does not want to repeat the experience. The neighbours, terrified by the dubious characters spilling from Adrià’s
saló
, had formed a cartel, plotting the removal of the Sorra siblings. After a few calls to the police, and a heated discussion with the landlord, the neighbours on Carrer d’Alemagne successfully orchestrated the Sorras’ expulsion from the building – all to Núria’s abject mortification.

Now Adrià’s festivities have begun again. On Tuesday last, Núria returned from her graduate work at the Institut del Teatre late in the evening, stopping at the Bar de Choco for a few drinks before winding her way home through the Raval. When she arrived at the blue entrance to her apartment, she heard Adrià’s braying laugh pouring down from the balcony. Music hugged the street, sludgy drum and bass. From the fourth-floor apartment, a window flew open and an ancient matron in a chequered nightgown peered down into the street. ‘
Por el amor de Dios!
’ the ancient matron cried out, seeing Núria. ‘Make them stop!’ Núria walked up the stairs to number 5B with steel in her heart. A cloud of marijuana greeted her, a smoky haze through which dark figures moved disjointedly, stumbling into the kitchen to refill tumblers of cheap vodka. Two shadows fumbled in the hallway, boy’s hands creeping into a young girl’s jeans. Music flooded Núria’s ears, a pounding bassline that thickened the blood.