Simon Toyne - The Key

‘Davlat Hastenesi Hospital.’

‘Yes, I have some flowers to send to a couple of patients and am trying to find their room numbers.’

‘Do you have the names?’

‘The first is Mrs Kathryn Mann, the second, Liv Adamsen.’

He heard the tapping of fingers on a keyboard. ‘Mrs Mann is being kept in room 410 in the secure psychiatric building. Miss Adamsen is in room 406 of the same building — no, wait a second. Actually Miss Adamsen was discharged today.’

‘When?’

‘It doesn’t say. Only that her room is now vacant.’

‘Did she have any visitors?’

There was a pause. ‘What has this got to do with delivering flowers?’

‘They have already been sent. I’m just checking to see if they got to her before she left.’

More tapping.

‘The only thing on the system is a police visit this afternoon.’

‘Thank you.’

Gabriel hung up, his mind racing with the implications of this new information. He switched back to the browser and typed RUIN POLICE FORCE into the search window. There was a hot-linked phone number under the first entry. He tapped it and returned the phone to his ear.

‘Ruin Police Division.’

‘Hello, could you please put me through to Inspector Arkadian in Homicide.’

‘Inspector Arkadian is on leave at present.’

‘Then could you patch me through to his mobile phone?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. Is there another member of the Homicide team who could help you?’

‘No. I need to speak to Inspector Arkadian specifically. It’s extremely urgent.’ He cast around for anything that would give him some leverage. ‘Tell him Gabriel Mann wants to talk. I escaped from police custody earlier today and I want to give myself up — but I’m only prepared to do it to him, and only if he calls me back within the next five minutes.’

The airport bookshop was filled with all the usual things catering for the average bored airline traveller. Liv made her way to a shelf of phrasebooks by the checkout desk and scanned the titles, picking out any with an unusual alphabet. She wanted to prove to herself that the word she had heard in her head was merely an echo of something she must have picked out in amongst the babble of voices. If she could just find out what language it was in then she could board her flight without worrying the whole way home that she was hearing voices and going nuts. By the time she reached the bottom shelf she had eight books in her hand. She opened the first, an Arabic phrasebook, and turned to the K section, looking for the word ‘key’. She found it and compared the translation to the symbols on her hand. It wasn’t even close. She did the same with the other seven books, working her way through Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese. None of them matched.

Dammit.

She jammed the books back and turned to go then stopped as something caught her eye on the next shelf. It was a book with a picture of a tablet on its cover with faint markings on its surface. They were not the same as the symbols Liv had written on her hand, but they were close. She took it down and opened it, only to discover that it was not a phrasebook — it was a history book. The inside flap provided a second shock. The photograph on the cover was of a five-thousand-year-old Sumerian tablet inscribed with a long-dead language. So she couldn’t have overheard it in the departure hall. She flipped through the book in search of pictures of other ancient texts. She was about to give up and dash for the plane when she found something. It was a photograph of a carved stone cylinder with a hole through its centre. Beneath it was a broad strip of wet clay the cylinder had been rolled across, leaving a square of text behind made up of lines and triangles.

They looked exactly like the symbols on Liv’s hand.

The caption identified it as a cylinder seal, an ancient method of reproducing messages. By inserting a rod or stick through the centre it could be rolled over wet earth or clay to reveal the writing inscribed on its surface. Often these were spells, laid on the edges of fields to bring forth bounty. The message on this particular seal, however, was unknown. It was written in a form of script known archaeologically as ‘proto-cuneiform’ or more poetically as ‘the lost language of the gods’ because of its great age and because its meaning had been forgotten in time.

Great, Liv thought, now I’m hearing voices in a language that hasn’t been spoken in nearly six thousand years; so much for putting my mind at rest.

A tannoy announcement cut through the muzak calling for last passengers for Cyprus Turkish Airline flight TK 7121 to Newark.

She was out of time. She ran to the checkout, pulling the last of her Turkish lira from her pocket to pay for the book. She’d read it on the plane — always assuming she would still make it.

Brother Gardener threw another broken branch on to the fire and picked up the last, hoping this one might reveal something the others had not.

Following the earlier meeting he had organized a team of gardeners to scour the grounds and collect all fallen branches and leaves while there was still some light left in the day to see by. He knew from bitter experience that the only way to stop the spread of blight was to act fast and burn it out.

As each diseased branch was brought to him he had carefully dismantled it, like a pathologist examining a corpse, looking for clues that might reveal the cause of the contagion. He had found nothing. There was no fungus residue, no burrowing insects or weevils nor any of the other parasites that plagued a garden and spread disease such as this. He had never seen anything like it before. It seemed more like a dry rot than anything else, but he had never known it take hold so quickly in living wood. It was as if the life had just left it — the sap turned to poison, the wood to dry pulp.

He stamped on the last branch, poked through the dry splinters then added it to the pyre and stood staring into the flames. If anyone had asked, he would have explained away the tears in his eyes as smoke, but the truth was he loved the garden better than any person. He had tended it, nursed it and nourished it for over forty years, until his own name had been forgotten and he had become simply Brother Gardener.

And now it was dying, and he had no idea how he could stop it.

When dawn came the men would return and the surgery would begin. They would have to cut deep to make sure the disease could not spread. It was necessary, but no less painful for it. He imagined himself as a father on the eve of an operation where his child’s limb would be sacrificed to spare its life. But his children were many, and there were no guarantees that any would survive.

So he stood in the dark, with smoke in his eyes, catching a strange whiff of oranges every now and again like a taunting memory of the orchard when it was bursting with health. He watched the fire until the bell rang in the mountain calling everyone inside for Vespers. It was the moment when the Citadel went to sleep for the night, a night he wished would never end, for he feared what the new dawn would bring.

Arkadian had just stepped through the front door when his mobile phone rang inside his jacket pocket.

‘Do not answer that,’ his wife hollered from the kitchen.

‘Smells great,’ he called back. ‘What is it, Tocana?’

‘I made it specially for my poor invalid husband to build up his strength, so if you want to eat any of it I suggest you switch off that phone and start acting ill.’

He took the phone from his pocket and peered at the caller display. ‘It’s work.’

‘It’s always work.’