The Medieval Murderers - The Lost Prophecies

Then from further up the street came the frantic blaring of a horn, and shouts and cries. Before Shiva had time to react, Parvati grabbed him by the shoulders and, with surprising strength, swung him around and shoved him against the wall of the shop. The wood creaked and shuddered. He stared past her. A yellow van, its horn still blaring, had passed over where he had just been standing and was careering on down the street. Pedestrians leaped aside and cyclists wobbled away. The van struck the side of a blue tuc-tuc, knocking it over with a crash, then barrelled into a side street. People ran over to the tuc-tuc as the driver and passenger climbed groggily out. ‘Fetch the police!’ someone called. Shiva turned to Parvati, who stood breathing heavily, looking more shocked than he was. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I think you just saved my life.’

‘I saw it coming. You had your back to it – thank God.’ She leaned against the wall, shaking slightly.

Shiva looked at the tuc-tuc. People were helping the driver and passenger. The driver was looking miserably at his overturned vehicle. He was big and dark-skinned, a Maori.

‘The van driver must have lost control,’ Parvati said. ‘Pray Jesus he hasn’t knocked anyone else down.’ But Shiva was thinking that he had heard no electric hum; the van’s engine was off. But if it had broken down, that wouldn’t stop the driver from steering it. He meant to knock me down. And her? But for her quick reactions, Parvati would have gone down too. Where had she learned to react that quickly? The dog hunts in America, perhaps.

‘I think we could both do with a drink,’ Shiva said. ‘Is there a bar around here?’

‘I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to drink.’

‘This would be medicinal.’

She shook her head and smiled. ‘I can’t.’

He took the opportunity the narrow escape had provided, and said: ‘Well, at least let me take you out to dinner, to say thank you. Anywhere you choose.’

She lowered her eyes. ‘Thank you.’ It would have been rude of her to refuse now.

‘Tomorrow night, perhaps.’

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. We don’t go out on the Sabbath. But perhaps the night after. There’s a place not far from here, in Charlotte Street. They serve nice food.’

‘My treat. As a thank you.’

She hesitated, then smiled again. ‘All right. Will you be able to find it?’

‘I’ve got a map.’

Two policemen on bicycles rode past them, halting by the overturned vehicle. Shiva shivered at a blast of cold wind from the sea.

‘Are you all right?’ Parvati asked. ‘Perhaps you should go and lie down.’

‘I think I will.’

‘I never asked anything about yourself, your work. I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m quite myself these days. It’s coming up to the anniversary, you see – Steve’s death.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘We can have a proper talk on Monday.’ She smiled. ‘About ourselves.’

Shiva looked at the policemen. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get caught up in enquiries.’

Parvati looked at where the policemen were helping the driver to heave the vehicle upright. It looked badly dented. ‘Poor man,’ she said.

Lying on the bed in his house, he thought more about the van. It could have been an accident, but all his training told him it wasn’t. That meant that someone, somewhere, knew who he was and why he was here. Had someone betrayed him? Someone back in England, perhaps? He thought of the cynical, epicene old commissioner; he could hardly see him as a secret member of the Shining Light Movement. Perhaps it was someone in Rodriguez’ office. Rodriguez had said the Church had tentacles everywhere in the Tasman Islands. He thought about Parvati. She had been nothing like he expected, with her quiet, sad certainties. But it was her in the photographs. He thought again of the old man with the beaten-in head, the man he was determined to avenge. He would have to tell Rodriguez what had happened. He wished he had his statue with him.

Rodriguez sat behind his big desk, considering what Shiva had told him, his fingers steepled together and his eyes half-closed. On the map behind his head the long, deep inlets of the fjords bit into the western coast of South Island.

He looked up. ‘I will send a message directly to Commissioner Williams. And I will have the security protocols here checked. But neither the European Commission nor the embassy would ever let a Shining Light sympathizer near a confidential post.’

‘Someone could have converted after joining the embassy, sir. You said yourself, sir, that sometimes they hide their membership.’

‘We do thorough vetting where sensitive material is involved.’ He looked at Shiva. ‘Of course, it might have been a genuine accident.’

‘What do the police say?’

‘They haven’t found the driver. And no one got a numberplate. But if it was a genuine accident, the driver would have every reason to keep quiet. He’d lose his licence, could even end up sorting waste in prison.’

‘It just seems too neat. She rescues me and that way builds a bond, gets me to trust her. And she was looking at her watch just before we left the café. She asked to leave quite suddenly. She said she felt guilty about coming, her Church wouldn’t approve.’

‘If the intelligence services have been infiltrated, we have a major problem. But I’m not convinced they have been yet.’ Rodriguez thought a moment. ‘Do you want a minder, someone to watch your back discreetly?’

‘No, thank you. If they’re as clever as they seem to be, they’d know. That would be the end of my cover.’

‘Don’t be too brave for your own good. Or ours.’

‘I’ll take care, sir. The next meeting should be safe enough. It’s in a public restaurant.’

Rodriguez nodded. He turned in his swivel chair and looked out of his window. In the bay, a large ship was winching a big net aboard, full of whitish material. Seagulls whirled and screamed.

‘They’re dredging the landfill site from the old city,’ Rodriguez said. ‘Organic material for the artificial soils. How we persist, humanity, how we struggle against extinction. Will we succeed, do you think?’

‘We’ve come a long way in the last fifty years,’ Shiva replied, echoing Commissioner Williams.

‘But no one knows when the temperature will stop rising. There are nuclear power stations under the sea. Populations rising, still not enough soil.’ Rodriguez smiled sadly. ‘Forgive me, I am a Spaniard, we have a fatalist streak. But, yes, things have been getting better, and I pray that may continue.’ He looked at Shiva. ‘Do not worry, Shiva, I am not a follower of the Shining Light, merely a rather puzzled Catholic. And we have eschewed politics since Rome was abandoned.’

Shiva spent Sunday working in the embassy, answering letters for the cultural secretary, part of his cover job. There was a tiny air travel quota for cultural exchanges, and he had to field competing requests for Shakespearean actors, academics and musicians to be sent out. The Tasmans still revelled in their British heritage, more than ever in this age obsessed with history. He left at six so he could get back to his house in daylight. He walked carefully, alert for anyone following, but there was no one.

As he turned into a street near his, he heard voices from a long, low, earth-built building on the corner. A large sign, black letters on white, was fixed above the door: CHURCH OF THE SHINING LIGHT. A boy of around eighteen, neat in shirt and trousers, stood in the doorway. He smiled and nodded at Shiva. On an impulse, Shiva turned and went in.

The interior was a sparsely decorated hall. There were posters around the walls: stylized pictures of Jesus, a halo around His head, performing miracles. One poster showed a dark, tattered-looking book. Underneath, in large letters, THE BLACK BOOK, THE LOST PROPHECIES.