Laurence O’Bryan - The Manhattan Puzzle

‘That’s terrible,’ said Isabel.

The waiter arrived. He made an elaborate show of placing their drinks in front of them. He was far too solicitous. Had he seen Rose crying?

‘You know what else?’ said Rose, after he’d gone.

She arched a neatly plucked brow, then started talking about how Terry had been acting odd recently. Isabel encouraged Rose to tell her more. After a few minutes she leaned towards Alek. ‘Are you looking forward to playing with Aunty Rosie?’ Alek nodded. She gave his hand a squeeze.

That was her signal.

‘I gotta go,’ she said, She’d hardly touched her coffee.

‘Make sure he tells you where he was,’ said Rose.

‘He’ll have some amazing explanation,’ she said. ‘Just like the last time.’

She gave Rose her long-suffering-wife smile.

‘Did I tell you Alek likes to sleep with the lights on?’ she said.

‘Three times,’ said Rose. ‘Go on. Have a good time. Making up is always the best part.’

Rose was definitely the most reliable friend she had. Alek would be in good hands.

‘Go on,’ said Rose. ‘Call me if there’s a problem.’

She pecked Alek on the cheek. He looked so cute. His little green weekend bag was under the table. She slid it near Rose. ‘That’s his things. You have my number, don’t you?’ Rose nodded.

Isabel took the bill.

‘This is on me.’ It was the least she could do.

A blast of bitter wind greeted her as she left the restaurant. She wanted to run all the way back to the house. She could picture Sean waiting there, standing in the hall, smiling, all apologetic.

A last-minute hitch to the merger could easily have stopped Sean from coming home. The merger was supposed to be a coup for BXH; the first time a Chinese state bank had ever taken a large stake in a major American bank, but God only knew what last-minute hitches might occur or what information was needed on Sean’s software initiative, facial recognition for all customers.

Sean had said the project would still go ahead, despite the takeover but she had got the distinct impression that he was worried about something, though he hadn’t elaborated about it. He’d been so preoccupied during the last few weeks that they’d hardly spoken more than a few words.

Even yesterday morning, when he’d called to tell her he’d be back late, he’d been strangely distant.

‘Be home, please,’ she mumbled, as the reality of what was happening hit her. She stared at the house as she neared it, looking for any sign that he might be back.

There wasn’t.

The policeman fixed the blue and white tape stretching from side to side of the alley. The two jumpsuited forensic officers who’d just gone under hadn’t bothered to secure it properly after they’d passed; typical.

They were probably too excited about the corpse to think about mundane matters.

It wasn’t often you found a murder victim with these sorts of injuries in Soho. He was glad he didn’t have to stand near the body any more. How anyone could do such a thing to a beautiful woman was beyond all understanding.

Maybe now, at last, they’d move the body. It was attracting far too much attention. The journalists and the TV crew were a gawping entourage.

‘Sorry sir, this area is restricted,’ he said.

A tall man with close-cropped dark hair and a weary expression pulled an ID card he’d seen only once before out of his pocket. It was in a brown leather wallet. It had the crown insignia and the words SECURITY SERVICES MI5 beneath it.

‘May I take your name for the crime scene log, sir?’ said the policeman.

‘Henry Mowlam,’ said the man, as he lifted the blue tape and passed underneath.

Henry went up the stairs slowly. They were narrow, nicotine coloured. He passed the policeman guarding the entrance to the room. This one had a better look at his card, which was a good thing, and then he let him through.

The room where the girl had been murdered was splattered in blood. There were trails of it on the walls and on the ceiling too. Henry stood in the centre of the room and turned slowly.

Then he went close to the splatter lines. Were they triangles?

He shook his head. ‘It’s just a coincidence,’ he whispered to himself.

Ever since he’d figured out that the square and arrow symbol in that old book could also be a representation of a skull, he’d been seeing them everywhere.

He been warned about how certain ‘cases’ could get under one’s skin at his last annual evaluation and they’d both known what the lady from human resources had meant.

But that didn’t mean he was going to heed the warning. There was no way he could just let all this go.

There was a lot more than a takeover and a murder going on here. He could feel it deep down inside him. He’d seen evil before, seen its effects, but he’d never seen it like this, part ancient, part modern. It was like a layered puzzle.

And Henry had a theory about it.

Their house, with its blood-red brick frontage, and olive-green eaves and sash windows, looked, she often thought, like something from an Edwardian fairy tale, when London stood at the centre of an Empire that stretched around the globe.

Living there was a fairy tale too. She hadn’t expected such happiness, and at times she felt uneasy about how quickly they’d achieved all this. She’d sold her apartment for a small profit. Sean had sold his house for a bigger one. A bargain had come on the market. And she’d deserved it.

Her first marriage, to Mark, who had worked beside her at the British Consulate in Istanbul had been a disaster. They’d lived in a dull Foreign Office apartment in the city and he used to go missing for weeks. The final insult had happened when he’d abandoned her in a house in northern Iraq that was under fire.

He was supposed to be her security escort.

Meeting Sean hadn’t seemed like such a big deal when it happened – he was in Istanbul to identify a friend’s body – but after they’d escaped those waterlogged tunnels under Hagia Sophia together, she’d wanted to be with him. The feeling was strong, unexpected, but he’d been what she’d needed.

She trusted Sean totally now. He wouldn’t let her down, like Mark had. He wasn’t like that. After Mark had died in Jerusalem, and Sean had rescued her from a hellhole cave in the Judean Hills, where she’d been held against her will for stepping across the wrong person’s path, their connection had become stronger, cemented.

She couldn’t imagine anything happening that could break it.

As she looked at her front door, her stomach was churning. She closed her eyes and said a prayer that he would be inside the house.

She remembered the day they’d moved in. They’d arrived together by taxi. And they’d found a window in the attic to stare out of. They’d both gazed over the slate roofs of London to the big wheel of the London Eye and the jumble of glittering buildings all around it. It had been a wonderful summer’s evening. The wind had been as light as a baby’s breath. They’d made love for hours.

Stay calm.

There were a lot of things she had to do. She had to finish packing, find her black jacket, get some cash out, check the timer switches on the lights, check their passports, tickets, and make sure all the windows in the house were closed.

She looked at her watch. It was eleven forty-five. He had to be back by now. Isabel put her key in the lock. She closed the door behind her quickly to keep the heat in.

‘Sean,’ she shouted.

There was no reply. Had she missed him? His scarf was hanging at the bottom of the stairs. Had it been there when she went out?