Necropolis

FRONT PAGE NEWS

Scarlett had only been missing for eighteen hours but she was a fifteen-year-old student on a school trip in the middle of London, and her disappearance had been enough to trigger a major panic with newspaper headlines, TV bulletins and a nationwide search. Both her parents had been informed at once and Paul Adams was already on a plane, on his way back from Hong Kong. He was actually in mid-air when Scarlett was found.

Scarlett had begun to realize that she was in trouble almost from the moment she found herself back in St Meredith’s, sitting opposite the policeman who had immediately launched into a series of questions.

“Where have you been?” he began.

Scarlett was still in shock, thinking about her narrow escape from Father Gregory. She pointed at the door with a trembling finger. “There…”

“What do you mean?” The policeman was young and out of his depth. He had already radioed for backup and an ambulance was on the way. Even so, he was the first on the scene. There might even be a promotion in this. He took out a notebook and prepared to write down anything Scarlett said.

“The monastery.” Scarlett muttered. “I was in the monastery.”

“And what monastery was that?”

“On the other side of the door.”

The policeman walked over to the door and opened it before Scarlett realized what he was going to do. At the last minute, she screamed at him, a single word.

“Don’t!”

She had visions of Father Gregory flying in, dragging her back to her cell. She was sure the nightmare was about to begin all over again. But the policeman was just standing there, scratching his head. There was no monastery on the other side of the door, no monks – just an alleyway, a brick wall, a line of rubbish bins. It was drizzling – grey, London weather. Scarlett looked past him. She couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

And that was when she knew that she was going to have to start lying. How could she explain where she had been and what had really happened to her? Magic doors? Psycho monks in Ukraine? People would think she was mad. Worse than that, they might decide that the whole thing had been a schoolgirl prank. She would be expelled from St Genevieve’s. Her father would kill her. She had to come up with an answer that made sense.

The next forty-eight hours were a nightmare almost as bad as the one she had left behind. More policemen and paramedics arrived and suddenly the church was crowded with people all asking questions and arguing amongst themselves. Scarlett didn’t seem to be hurt but even so she was wrapped in a blanket and whisked off to hospital. Somehow, the press had already found out that she was back. The street was jammed with photographers and journalists threatening to mob her as she was bundled into the ambulance and there were more of them waiting when she was helped out on the other side. All Scarlett could do was keep her head down, ignore the flashes of the cameras and wish that this whole thing would be over soon.

Mrs Murdoch had been called to the hospital and stayed with Scarlett as she was examined by a doctor and a nurse. The housekeeper was looking shell-shocked. It was obvious that nothing like this had ever happened to her before. The doctor took Scarlett’s pulse and heart rate and then asked her to strip down to her underwear.

“Where did you get these?” He had noted a series of scratches running down her back.

“I don’t know…” Scarlett guessed that she had been hurt in her final confrontation with Father Gregory but she wasn’t going to talk about that now. She was pretending that she was too dazed to explain anything.

“How about this, Scarlett?” The nurse had found blood on her school jersey. “Is this your blood?”

“I don’t think so.”

The jersey was placed in a bag to be handed over to the police for forensic examination. It occurred to Scarlett that they would be unable to find a match for it… not unless their database extended all the way to Ukraine.

Finally, Scarlett was allowed to take a shower and was given new clothes to wear. Two policewomen had arrived to interview her. Mrs Murdoch stayed with her and just for once Scarlett was glad to have her around. She wouldn’t have wanted to go through all this on her own.

“Do you remember what happened to you from the time of your disappearance? Perhaps you’d like to start when you arrived at the church…”

The policewomen were both in their thirties, kind but severe. The rumour was already circulating that Scarlett had never been in any danger at all and that this whole thing was a colossal waste of police time. By now, Scarlett had worked out what she was going to say. She knew that it would sound pretty lame. But it would just have to do.

“I don’t remember anything,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling well in the church. I was dizzy. So I went outside to get some fresh air – and after that, everything is blank. I think I fell over. I don’t know…”

“You fainted?”

“I think so. I want to help you. But I just don’t know…”

The two policewomen looked doubtful. They had been on the force long enough to know when someone was lying and it was obvious to them that Scarlett was hiding something. But there wasn’t much they could do. They asked her the same questions over and over again and received exactly the same answers. She had fallen ill. She had fainted. She couldn’t remember anything else. And what other explanation could there be?

The interview ended when Paul Adams appeared. A taxi had brought him straight from Heathrow Airport and he burst into the room, his suit crumpled, his face a mixture of anxiety, relief and irritation, all three of them compounded by a generous dose of jet lag.

“Scarly!” He went over and hugged his daughter.

“Hello, Dad.”

“I can’t believe they’ve found you. Are you hurt? Where have you been?” The two policewomen exchanged a glance. Paul Adams turned to them. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take my daughter home. Mrs Murdoch…”

They left the hospital by a back exit, avoiding the press pack who were still camped out at the front. By now, Scarlett was exhausted. She had been found mid-morning, but it was early evening before she was released. She was desperate to go to bed and once she got there, she slept through the entire night. Maybe that was just as well. She would need all her strength for the headlines that were waiting for her the next day.

MISSING SCHOOLGIRL FOUND AFTER JUST ONE DAY POLICE ASK – WAS THIS A PRANK?

Mystery still surrounds the return of fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Scarlett Adams, who was discovered by police, just one day after she went missing on a school trip. Scarlett was feared abducted after she vanished during a visit to St Meredith’s church in East London, prompting a national search. She was later found unhurt inside the church itself.

Although she received hospital treatment for minor scratches, there was no indication that she had been assaulted or kept against her will.

So far, the girl – described as “bright and sensible” by the teachers at the?15,000-a-year private school that she attends in Dulwich – has been unable to offer any explanation, claiming that she is suffering from memory loss. Her father, Paul Adams, a corporate lawyer, angrily dismissed claims that the whole incident might have been a schoolgirl prank. “Scarlett has obviously suffered a traumatic experience and I’m just glad to have her back,” he said. Meanwhile, the police seem anxious to close the file. “What matters is that Scarlett is safe,” Detective Chris Kloet said, speaking from New Scotland Yard. “We may never know what happened to her in the eighteen hours she was gone but we are satisfied that no crime seems to have been committed.”

The report had been sent ten thousand miles by fax. It was being examined by a boy in a room in Nazca, Peru. The boy got up and went over to a desk. He held the sheet of paper under a light. There was a picture of Scarlett next to the text. She had been photographed holding a hockey stick with two more girls, one on either side. A team photo. The boy examined her carefully. She was quite good-looking, he thought. Asian, he would have said. Almost certainly the same age as him.

“When did this arrive?” he asked.

“Half an hour ago,” came the reply.

The boy’s name was Matthew Freeman. He was the first of the Gatekeepers and, without quite knowing how, he had become their unelected leader. Four months ago, he had faced the Old Ones in the Nazca Desert and had tried to close the barrier, the huge gate, that for centuries had kept them at bay. He had failed. The King of the Old Ones had cut him down where he stood, leaving him for dead. The last thing he had seen was the armies of the Old Ones, spreading out and disappearing into the night.

It had taken him six weeks to recover from his injuries and since then he had been resting, trying to work out what to do next. He was staying in a Peruvian farmhouse, a hacienda just outside the town of Nazca itself. Richard Cole, the journalist who had travelled with him from England was still with him. Richard was his closest friend. It was he who had just come into the room.

“It’s got to be her,” Matt said.

Richard nodded. “She was in St Meredith’s. She must have gone through the same door that you went through. God knows what happened to her. She was missing for eighteen hours.”

“Her name is Scarlett.”

“Scar.” Richard nodded again.

Matt thought for a moment, still clutching the article. He had spent the past four months searching for Scarlett in the only way that he could – through his dreams. Night after night he had visited the strange dream world that had become so familiar to him. It had helped him in the past. He was certain that she had to be there somewhere. Perhaps it would lead him to her, helping him again.

And now, quite unexpectedly, she had turned up in the real world. There could be no doubt that this was her, the fifth of the Five. And she was in England, in London! A student at an expensive private school.

“We have to go to her,” Matt said. “We must leave at once.”

“I’m checking out tickets now.”

Matt turned the photograph round in the light, tilting it towards himself. “Scar,” he muttered. “Now we know where she is.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. He looked grave. “But the Old Ones will know it too.”