Sanctus

Chapter 46

It was not yet two in the morning when Liv cleared customs and emerged into the high-ceilinged and airy arrivals hall. Expressionist murals and hanging sculptures filled its cavernous space. She recognized some of the more dramatic moments of Ruin’s long and bloody past from her in-flight reading.

The energetic historical figures contrasted starkly with the real people shuffling about below them. There were a few sharp-suited business types, scrutinizing their laptops and BlackBerrys, but not many. Small herds of dead-eyed visitors trundled aimlessly across the marble floors while a couple of bored cops looked on, each with an automatic weapon slung over their shoulder.

Most of the tourist traffic heading to Ruin flew into the larger airport north of Gaziantep as it was closer to the ancient stronghold. Liv hadn’t considered any of this when booking her ticket; she’d just bought the first flight she thought she could catch. According to the guidebook there were still plenty of buses to the ancient city from the old airport, but at this time of the morning she figured she’d probably have to splash out on a cab just as soon as she’d got hold of some local cash.

As she scanned the place for a bureau de change she saw the tall, good-looking guy staring straight at her. She glanced past him at first, flustered by his direct gaze, then looked back. He was smiling at her now. She smiled back. Then he held up a card with her name written across it in magic marker.

‘Miss Adamsen?’ he asked, drifting closer.

She nodded, not quite sure what to make of him.

‘Arkadian sent me,’ he explained. His voice was deep. It sounded like it belonged to someone older. There was no trace of an accent in it.

‘American?’ Liv asked.

‘I studied there,’ he said, the smile remaining cool and steady. ‘But don’t be impressed. This is a tourist town, everyone speaks English here.’

She nodded as one mystery was solved, then frowned again as another presented itself.

‘How did you know which plane — ?’

‘I didn’t,’ he cut in. ‘I’ve met the last few international flights on the off chance you’d be on one of them.’ He sounded pretty cheerful for a guy who’d been up half the night staking out an airport.

‘First one I could get. .’ she said, feeling bad he’d been landed such a crappy detail.

‘It’s not a problem.’ He pointed at the crumpled holdall dangling from her hand. ‘That your luggage?’

‘Yeah; but don’t worry, I got it.’ She hoisted it on to her shoulder and began following him across the shiny marble floor.

You sure don’t get this kind of service in Jersey City, Liv thought as she fixed her eyes on the broad back cutting a swathe through the bovine knots of tourists. His long black trench coat billowed out behind him as he breezed along, giving him an air of dashing chivalry very much in keeping with the murals.

She slipped into a slowly moving revolving door. In the confined space she found herself standing close enough to be enveloped by his scent. Clean, astringent, with hints of leather and citrus and something ancient and comforting — incense maybe. Most of the cops she knew generally considered Old Spice the height of sophistication. She glanced up. He was taller than she’d thought, and handsome in a traditional, tall, dark kind of way — his eyes blue and icy, though his hair wasn’t black, as she had first thought, but very dark brown. He was exactly the sort of man mothers warned their daughters about and fortune-tellers found lurking in crystal balls if you paid them enough.

The revolving door spun them gently into the night and the smell of rain on concrete rinsed through her travel-numbed senses. It was the freshest thing she’d encountered in more than twelve hours, but in the twisted world of the nicotine addict all it did was remind her how much she needed a cigarette. She stopped just outside and opened her bag. ‘Where’re you parked?’

The man turned and watched her fishing through the jumbled contents of her holdall. ‘Right there.’ He nodded towards the short-stay car park across the road.

Liv glanced out into the rain-whipped night. ‘I packed in kind of a hurry,’ she said. ‘Don’t. . think. . I’ve got a coat in here.’

The man held up his umbrella but Liv ignored it. She only had eyes for the crumpled pack of Luckies she’d finally managed to find. She tapped one out and plucked it from the packet with her mouth.

‘Bit windy,’ she said, hunching up her shoulders against the cold. ‘Don’t want you to bust your umbrella on my account. Tell you what. . why don’t you go get the car? I’ll stay here and have one of these, then I won’t get drenched and you won’t have to sue me for passive smoking.’

The man hesitated, looked out at the sheets of rain gusting across the drop-off zone. ‘OK. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.’

She watched him stride away, the wind grabbing the tails of his coat. She cupped her hand around the end of her cigarette, lit up and pulled nicotine and night air deep into her lungs. She breathed out, feeling the tension of the flight begin to melt and float away with the smoke. She stuffed the pack back into her bag, dug around until she found her cell phone and powered it up.

A van swished by in the rain, passing a bus shelter across the way where a security guard appeared to be rousting three young people who’d tried to bed down for the night. They looked like students who’d been partying too hard, or just regular vagrants who spent their life being moved on from one place to the next.

Welcome to Ruin. .

The phone buzzed in Liv’s hand as it caught a signal. There were three missed calls and two new messages. She was shifting her thumb across the keypad to dial her voicemail when a nondescript Renault saloon pulled up in front of her. The window slid down and the well-dressed cop smiled at her from behind the wheel. He leaned across and popped open the back door.

Liv took a final hungry drag on her cigarette, buried it in the sand-filled ashtray by the revolving door, then grabbed her bag and dashed across the wet sidewalk into the warm, dry comfort of the car.

‘What’s your name?’ she said, pulling the door closed and reaching for the safety belt.

He put the car in gear and fell in line behind the cars and taxis pressing slowly towards the exit signs. ‘Gabriel,’ he said.

‘Like the angel?’

She saw his eyes crinkle in the rear-view mirror. ‘Like the angel.’

She leaned against the door and felt the weariness settle on her like a blanket. She was about to close her eyes when she remembered her messages. She dialled her voicemail and lifted the cell to her ear.

‘Who are you calling?’ the driver asked.

‘Just getting my messages.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘Where we headed exactly?’

‘Ruin,’ he said, steering away from the traffic and down a service road. ‘Where else?’

Then, through the crackle of storm static, her first message started to play.