Michael White - Equinox

Philip found it almost immediately. They sat at a tiny wooden table in the kitchen end of the main room with the book opened between them. It was entitled Isaac Newton: Biography of a Magus by Liam Ethwiche.

'Charlie was particularly fond of this book,' Laura said recalling the words Sabrina had used. Then she added. 'The key has a number on it.' It was number 112.

'A page number, I would imagine,' Philip said and flicked through the book until he reached page 112.

As they scanned through the first two paragraphs, they noticed the anomaly at almost the same moment. In the middle of a line, the thread was suddenly lost. The final part of the sentence read: Paddington Station, box 14, Geoff's party, sweet pea.

Philip stood up and walked over to the window. Outside, the grey buildings and the grey sky seemed to merge. Rush hour had started and the traffic was stacking up on New Cross Road. At the end of the street, four lines of vehicles were stationary, their exhausts billowing fumes into the late-afternoon air. He did not notice the spotlessly clean black Toyota parked across the street.

'Make any sense to you?' he asked.

'Yeah, it does, actually,' Laura replied. 'Let's go.' She tucked the book under her arm. 'You want to drive, or shall I?'

Paddington Station was no more than six miles from New Cross as the crow flies but it took them nearly ninety minutes to fight their way through the traffic, including a twenty-minute period during which, thanks to roadworks near Piccadilly Circus, they were immobilised on Pall Mall. The sun had set as they approached the Thames from the south some forty minutes earlier, and as they turned along Praed Street the seedy neon red and lemon glow only accentuated the drabness of the crumbling, pollution-stained buildings on either side, home to cheap jean shops and walk-up peep-shows.

Inside the station a human tidal wave washed through the concourse. The personal lockers and security boxes were positioned between a ticket office and a cafe called The Commuter's Brew. On the front of each box was a small panel containing a numeric keypad.

'So, you going to tell me the combination at last, and what "sweet pea" means, Laura?' Philip asked.

She sighed. 'Do I have a choice?'

'Not really.'

Laura leaned back against the boxes, eyeing the commuters as they streamed past. Turning back to Box 14, she mumbled: 'It's my nickname — well, Charlie's nickname for me, anyway'

Philip snorted.

'We first met at a party in Oxford in 1982. It was in a big shared house on the Banbury Road owned by the parents of a guy in our year, Geoff. . Geoff Townsend, I think his name was. Anyway, after that night, Charlie always called me "sweet pea".'

'"Sweet pea"?'

'I wore a jacket made of peacock feathers to the party.'

Philip looked at her in disbelief for a moment, then burst out laughing.

'It was a long time ago.'

Her earnest expression made him laugh even harder. 'I'm sorry,' Philip managed to say, his face straightening. 'It's just the vision of you in a peacock-feather jacket, it's. .'

'Priceless?'

'Well, yes.'

'The New Romantics were at their height. You remember? You were probably wearing a silk shirt and tucker boots.'

'I never owned a pair of tucker boots,' Philip said indignantly.

Now it was Laura's turn to laugh. 'And you had a horrible little plait when I first met you.'

'It was a real ponytail, actually' Philip grimaced. 'OK. What's the combination?'

She stared at the keypad and began punching in some numbers. Philip watched. 1…9…8… 2. Then she hit the 'enter' button, took the handle and pulled.

Inside the box lay a rolled-up sheet of paper tied with a black silk ribbon. Beside it was a CD in a clear plastic case.

Philip reached in and withdrew the items.

'A DVD, I guess,' he said. He loosened the ribbon on the scroll. 'And what looks …' He paused. 'Well, this is interesting. Even I know enough Latin to translate that.'

At the top of the first page was written: Principia Chemicum by Isaacus Neuutonus .

Laura and Philip barely exchanged a word as they weaved their way out of London, heading west back towards Oxford. The traffic had lightened a little, and within twenty minutes they had reached the A40 which would lead them to the motorway and the fifty-mile stretch home. They were lost in their own thoughts, each of them working through the threads of what they had learned, neither of them yet ready to talk about it. Philip drove as Laura studied the Newton document. It was covered in tiny, precise calligraphy, most of it written in a strange language or elaborately encoded, giving the appearance of gibberish. This was interspersed with lines written in Latin, along with line drawings, odd-looking symbols, and tables and charts dotted around the page seemingly at random. Then, as they left behind the lights of the city and entered the dark monotony of the motorway and the beckoning countryside on either side of the road, it became too dark for her to read.

'It's obviously a photocopy,' Laura said. 'But what the hell is it about?'

'I wish now I'd paid more attention in Latin lessons when I was thirteen,' Philip said.

'Actually, my Latin's pretty good, but this is a complete jumble of languages. And what about all these symbols and coded sections? It looks like word soup to me.'

'And what on earth was Charlie Tucker doing with a copy of a document written by Isaac Newton? It's not one I've ever heard of.'

'Me neither. He wrote the Principia Mathematica , of course, but. .' Reaching over to the back seat, Laura grabbed the Newton biography that they had picked up at Charlie's apartment. Switching on the interior light, she began to flick through the pages. 'Biography of a Magus ,' Laura said quietly. 'I remember this book coming out. Caused quite a stir at the time, didn't it?'

Philip looked puzzled.

'It's a revisionist work — Newton as some wacko sorcerer or something. . Now I remember,' she added and tapped the opened book with her fingers. 'It hinged on the idea that Newton was a dedicated alchemist.'

'Yeah,' Philip replied. 'I remember it too. The book came out a few years back. I read a review in The Times'

'Newton wasn't just an alchemist,' Laura replied and looked up from the book. 'Looks like he was seriously into black magic. Says here: "Newton was an adept in the black arts. Evidence for this astonishing fact may be found among the writings he kept hidden until his death. These were held in secret by his disciples for fear of tarnishing the great man's enormous scientific reputation. It was only in 1936 under the auspices of the economist and Newton scholar John Maynard Keynes that these documents were rediscovered — more than a million words on occult subjects ranging from divination to alchemy.'" 'So he published the legitimate scientific stuff, but kept the risque material well away from prying eyes?'

'Apparently. He couldn't have let his interest in the occult become known; it would have destroyed his career.'

'And you think this Principia Chemicum could have been one of his secret works?'

'Not sure yet.' Laura flicked to the index of the biography in her lap. 'He wrote all his documents in Latin, it was the standard form of the time.' 'But it's odd that he should use the Latinised version of his name. But. . Ah-ha,' she said after a moment. 'Listen. . "Newton's most famous work, his Principia Mathematica is sadly not paired with a Principia Chemicum — what would have been a definitive work describing his alchemical findings. He leaves us clues and hints, but no manuscript offering an account of success in producing the mythical Philosopher's Stone. This is because, like many hundreds of researchers before and after him,