Scott Mariani - The Doomsday Prophecy

He was so deep in thought as he walked back through the main quad that he didn’t see anyone approach.

‘I was hoping I might bump into you,’ a voice said.

Ben turned and saw the tall, grey-haired, tweedy figure of Professor Tom Bradbury approaching. He hadn’t seen Bradbury since his interview six weeks before with the Faculty Admissions board.

‘Professor. How are you?’

Bradbury smiled. ‘Call me Tom. I think we’ve known each other long enough for that.’

Tom Bradbury and Ben’s father, Alistair Hope, had been at Cambridge together. The friendship between a devout theology scholar and a law student might have seemed unlikely, but it had lasted many years and only ended when Ben’s father had died. That had been the year Ben broke off his studies and joined the army. He had few fond memories of that time, but he’d always remembered Tom Bradbury even though he’d lost contact with him all those years ago. As a teenage student he’d come to think of him as an uncle. His presence had always been warm and reassuring, with the aromatic smell of pipe tobacco ingrained in his clothes. His tutorials had been the liveliest of all the classes Ben could remember. His speciality was the Old Testament – scripture that was so ancient and dense and obscure that it was hard to bring to life. But Professor Bradbury could do that, and the students had loved him.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ Bradbury said. ‘Are you free tomorrow lunchtime?’

‘I had a date with Descartes,’ Ben smiled. ‘But lunch with you sounds a lot more appealing.’

‘Wise choice,’ Bradbury said. ‘Not my favourite philosopher, I have to say. I was thinking you could come over to our place.’

‘Still up in Summertown?’

Bradbury nodded. They agreed on a time, and the professor smiled weakly and headed off towards his rooms in Canterbury Quad. Ben watched him walk away. Bradbury was a sprightly, upright sixty-three. He was normally jovial and full of life, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. But today he was different. There was something missing. He looked old and weary, subdued. Was he ill? If that was the case, why invite someone for lunch the next day? Something was wrong.

Greece

It was a Buck clasp knife, and the fair-haired man loved to sharpen it. When he was sitting out on the balcony with nothing much else to do except soak up the sun, drink Ouzo and watch over the bitch, he would spend hours carefully whetting the blade with an oiled sharpening stone. He had the edge so perfectly honed that he could lie the knife on its back, edge-up, leave a banknote lying across it overnight, and when he came back in the morning the banknote would have cut itself in half with just its own weight.

He took the knife out of his pocket and clicked the blade open with one hand as he walked slowly up to the bed. Her eyes rolled across to look at him, and she let out a stifled cry of terror behind the gag. Her arms were strapped down to the bare mattress. Her fingers were clawing and straining as she struggled.

He rested on the edge of the bed, leaned across her and let her see the blade up close. He could smell the fear coming from her. ‘Looks sharp, doesn’t it?’ He ran his thumb gently down the cutting edge, splitting the first layer of skin. ‘You have no idea how sharp it is. But maybe you’ll be finding out pretty soon.’

He pressed the flat of the blade against her cheekbone, and she drew in a gasp. Her throat fluttered.

‘Now, I’m going to take this gag off, and you’re not going to start screaming again. You’re going to talk to me. You’re going to tell me everything. Because if you don’t, I’m going to put your eye out. Pop it, just like that.’

The dark-haired woman was standing watching from the other side of the bedroom. Her arms were folded and her face was tight. She wanted to intervene, but she checked herself.

The man ripped away the gag. Zoë’s breath was coming in rapid gasps. She swallowed hard, and gave a whimper of terror as he ran the cold blade lightly down her temple and traced a line around her eye.

‘I don’t remember,’ she gasped.

‘Yes, you do. Don’t lie to us.’

‘I swear to you, I don’t remember.’

‘One little push of the blade,’ he said. ‘That’s all it takes, and I’m going to watch that pretty little blue eye come spilling out. You ever seen a burst eyeball? Looks like raw egg.’ He smiled, let the touch of the knife linger on her skin, then drew it away.

She was shuddering with horror. ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Cleaver,’ he said. ‘You remember Mr Cleaver, don’t you? You remember what you did to him?’

She shook her head violently.

‘Where is it?’ he said.

‘Where is what?’

‘Where is it? ’ he screamed in her face.

‘ I don’t fucking know ,’ she screamed back. ‘I don’t fucking know what you want from me!’ Her eyes were desperate, her hair sticking to the tears on her cheeks. ‘You’ve got to believe me! I don’t know anything! You’ve got the wrong person!’ She began to cry harder. ‘Let me go,’ she pleaded. ‘Let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’

The woman stepped forward and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘We need to talk.’

He tensed, still staring at the girl on the bed. Then he sighed, turned away and followed the woman out of the room.

They stepped into the hallway outside the bedroom. The woman shut the door, so that Zoë Bradbury wouldn’t hear. ‘This isn’t working.’

‘She’s faking it, Kaplan,’ he whispered furiously.

‘I don’t think you can know that.’

‘Give me half an hour alone with the bitch. I’ll get it out of her.’

‘How? By putting her eyes out?’

‘Just let me.’

‘We haven’t exactly been easy on her. What makes you think you can get it out of her?’

‘I will. Give me more time.’

The woman bit her lip, shook her head. ‘She can’t stay here. We don’t have the facilities. I’m getting her out.’

‘Give me ten minutes with her first.’

‘Negative.’

‘Five minutes. I’ll make her talk, believe me.’

‘You’re enjoying this too much, Hudson.’

‘I’m doing my job.’

‘What if you kill her? Then we’re all dead.’

‘I won’t kill her. I know what I’m doing, Kaplan.’

She snorted. ‘Do you? Listen to me. I want you to put that knife away. If I see it again I’ll put a bullet in your head. Is that completely clear to you?’

The man went quiet, staring at her sullenly.

‘They’ll get it out of her,’ she said. ‘They have other ways.’

The Holywell Music Room, Oxford

That evening

Ben leaned back in the hard seat and watched as the audience trickled into the room. The acoustic amplified every sound, and people kept their voices down. He was in the back row and the place was filling up slowly, but he didn’t think the concert was going to draw a big crowd.

He’d spotted the flyer a couple of days before, and he was glad he was here. He wasn’t much of a concertgoer, but the idea of an hour of Bartók string quartets appealed to him. It was the kind of edgy music that made a lot of people restless and uncomfortable, but which he liked. It was moody and dark, introspective, a little dissonant, filled with a tension that somehow relaxed him.

The Holywell Music Room was tucked away down a winding side-street not far from the Bodleian Library. It wasn’t a big or opulent venue, just a plain simple white room with a low stage at one end and capacity for about a hundred people. The lighting was stark and the stepped banks of seats seemed to be designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. The programme said it was the oldest concert hall in Europe, and that Handel had played there in his time. There was a short blurb about the composer and the music, and a little paragraph on each member of the string quartet. They were all postgraduate music students, teaching and gigging their way through college.