Tom Harper: The Book of Secrets

The gunman knew it too. He edged away from the door, tracking the pistol in sharp sweeps across the rooftop, silent under the shriek of the alarm.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the alarm cut out. A desolate silence filled Nick’s ears. Even the gunman was caught off guard. He paused, glancing around uncertainly.

Nick reached inside his coat pocket and felt his keys, cold and wet. He balled them in his fist and pulled them out. The background roar of the city at night was beginning to filter back over the ringing in his ears, but he didn’t dare risk being heard. Across the rooftop, the gunman was still edging closer.

Nick reached out. His arm was frozen and weighted down by the sodden coat. He had it to do it. Throw the keys, distract the killer, tackle him and get the gun out of his hand. If he just came one step closer…

Nick was trembling. He’d never done anything like this in his life.

The gunman took a half-step nearer and turned. Nick tensed his arm for the throw – but now the killer was looking straight at him. If Nick moved he’d be dead before the keys left his hand. Even if he didn’t move… He held his breath, feeling the pressure build in his lungs, pushing against his chest and throat. All he wanted to do was scream.

And then the gunman turned away and walked back to the door. Nick waited, still not daring to breathe. He squeezed the keys in his fingers and closed his eyes. Was now the moment? He’d never thought he could be so terrified.

He opened his eyes again. The gunman was kneeling beside an air-conditioning unit, glancing over his shoulder. He had his back to Nick – if ever there was a time to take him, it was now, Nick told himself.

He drew a deep breath and tensed himself to spring. His muscles felt locked stiff with cold. What if he was too slow? What if the man heard him coming across the fake grass?

The killer stood up. He took one last look at the rooftop, straight over Nick’s head again, then stepped inside the doorway and vanished. Nick heard him jogging down the stairs.

Nick waited until he was sure the man was gone, then picked himself up. The moment he was on his feet his whole body shuddered uncontrollably. He could hardly stand – thank God he hadn’t tried anything dumb with the gunman. He peeled off his coat and staggered across the wet grass to the door, keeping a nervous eye on the stairs in case the man came back. He almost collapsed on his knees next to the air conditioner as he tried to see what the gunman had been doing.

A dark crack showed where the maintenance flap hadn’t been shut properly. Nick pulled it open. Inside, a black pistol nestled among the dials and tubes.

Nick reached in and picked it up. It was heavier than he’d expected; his stiff fingers almost dropped it. Was there a safety catch? He hadn’t touched a gun since Scout camp, and this was very different from shooting.22 rifles at paper targets. Even holding the pistol in his hand he felt frightened by its power. This was the gun that had killed Bret.

He laid it down on the artificial grass and moved away. Blue and red lights flashed off the canyon walls of the apartment blocks, reflected ten-to-a-floor in the stacked black windows. Only then did he hear the sirens.

Cologne, 1420-1

Through the autumn of that year, I made a number of discoveries about Konrad Schmidt.

He was a fair master, but a hard man to impress. I was a more than able apprentice. When he taught us the device for drawing out gold to make wire, my first length came through supple and straight. Pieter spent an afternoon – and a considerable quantity of his father’s gold – producing length after length that stretched and bunched and snapped like wet dough. When we hammered gold between parchment sheets to make leaf, mine emerged airy and gossamer thin; Pieter’s was lumpy as porridge. When Konrad showed us how to fire silver sulphide onto an engraving to make the lines leap out, mine were sharp as glass. Pieter’s looked as if he had left it standing in the grate too long.

Yet Konrad Schmidt resisted my precocity. Whenever I showed him a piece of work, he merely grunted and gave me another task before going back to the laborious task of correcting his son. When I suggested – after many hours’ observation – a way to improve the gold wire puller, he heard me in silence and then dismissed me with a shake of his head. At first I ascribed it to a father’s love for his son – but the more I watched them together, the less plausible that seemed. Konrad rarely criticised Pieter’s work, but beat him for the most minor lapses: leaving a bucket of milk in the sun, forgetting to doff his cap to a customer, putting a hammer in the wrong place in the rack. Eventually I decided that the one was a substitute for the other – that Konrad found so many other faults because he could not admit to himself that his son would not succeed him in his trade. That, I supposed, was why he had had to on take his own son as an apprentice, a practice frowned upon by the guild. And, perhaps, why he resented my skill.

Gerhard resented me too, though that I put down to obvious rivalry. His fat hands were surprisingly fine at working metal – far more than I had credited – but he did not have my instinct for gold. At first he tried to hold me back by giving me lesser tasks, flattering Pieter with responsibility, but this quickly rebounded on him when he had to take responsibility for Pieter’s mistakes. Thereafter he decided it was better to take credit for my work than blame for Pieter’s, and satisfied himself with thrashing me whenever I gifted him an excuse.

There were other things I learned about Konrad Schmidt and his household that year.

I learned that his wife was the third Frau Schmidt. She praised me often and extravagantly – my diligence, my honesty, my artful skill – and I was flattered, until I realised she did it only to humiliate Pieter, who was not her son.

I learned that Gerhard could not afford the gold he needed to produce his master-piece, and therefore could not gain full membership as a master of the guild. Rather than save, he spent what he had drinking out his frustrations in the riverfront taverns.

I learned that Konrad kept the key to his cabinet on a string around his neck and never removed it, except once a month when he visited the bathhouse. When I knew that, I followed him there, and while he bathed took an impression of the key between two wax blocks softened in the steamy air. That evening I cast my own copy in the forge, and after that would creep down at night when Pieter was asleep to fondle and caress the pieces inside.

It was not a happy household, but nor had been my home in Mainz, so I did not mind. I was happy in my work. Once I learned that my skill only fuelled envy and resentment I kept it to myself as much as possible, and took my delights in solitude.

The only person who admired my ability was poor, artless Pieter. Four years younger, he venerated me with the unthinking awe of a brother. It was a new feeling for me, always last and youngest growing up. Though it was sometimes a burden, more often it made me glow with possessive pride. I took to protecting Pieter, slipping him pieces of my work to pass off as his own, neglecting my own tasks to show him again and again how to perform some simple piece of skill. Though it sometimes earned me a beating, I did not care. Each time his knee brushed mine at the workbench, each time I cupped my hand over his to guide his graving tool, the demon inside me thrilled with delight. Of course I suffered agonies and shame – but they were vivid agonies, the sweetest shame, raging like fire in my body. On Sundays in the cathedral I stared up at the cross of Our Saviour and begged for release, but I knew in my heart I did not mean it. At night we lay in our shared bed and I dug my nails into my palms until they bled like Christ’s to resist the wild temptations that assailed me. Some nights, especially in winter, Pieter would burrow against me for warmth, half asleep, and I would have to roll away before my risen lust betrayed itself. Eventually, I reasoned, the demon would see that he could not overcome me and would depart my body for a weaker vessel. Until then I basked in the heat of my lust and the glory of my suffering, quivering in sublime stasis.