Sanctus

Chapter 85

The brass plaque on the wall announced that the building housed the offices of Itaat Eden Kimse, translated underneath as the Ruin Observer. The cab driver turned on his hazards and Liv handed him her phone. ‘I’ll send someone right out,’ she said.

She was directed by the world’s oldest receptionist to the international desk on the first floor. As soon as she walked into the open-plan office she instantly felt at home. Every press room she’d ever been in looked exactly like this one: low suspended ceilings; nests of desks separated by half-height partitions; strip lights that kept the place lit in the same non-descript fashion, day and night. It never ceased to amaze her that all the great works of modern journalism, all the government-baiting, Pulitzer prize-winning, life-enriching material that poured on to newsstands on a daily basis was conceived in surroundings so deeply uninspiring they could just as easily be used to sell life insurance.

She scanned the bland magnificence of the office, and clocked the eager woman with dark 1940s hair marching towards her, smiling most of the way through perfect lipstick. She looked so full of bristling energy that if she’d suddenly burst into song or a tightly choreographed dance routine, Liv wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

‘Miss Adamsen?’ The woman thrust out a manicured hand like a low-flying Nazi salute.

Mesmerized, Liv nodded and held out her own hand.

‘I’m Ahla,’ the vision said, taking it, shaking it, then handing it back like a punched ticket. ‘I’m office manager.’ Her voice was surprisingly deep and guttural, quite at odds with her china-doll looks. ‘I’m just getting OK for your cash float,’ she added, turning and leading the way across the office.

‘Oh,’ Liv said, the mention of money snapping her to attention. ‘There’s a taxi downstairs holding my phone to ransom. Could someone rescue it for me? I have absolutely no cash.’

The perfect lips pursed. ‘Not a problem,’ she said, in a way that left Liv in no doubt that it was. ‘For today, you use this,’ she flourished a manicured hand in the direction of an unoccupied desk. ‘But if you need any longer, you’ll have to share. Everyone’s in town for the Citadel story. You also?’

‘Er, no,’ Liv said. ‘I’m writing a. . travel piece.’

‘Oh! OK, well here’s what you asked for. I bring cash as soon as I get someone to sign. I’ll. . go and pay taxi.’ She swivelled on an elegant heel. ‘Oh, and your boss asked you to call him,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Dial nine for outside line.’

Liv watched her march away, all energy and purpose. In a movie she would be played by a youngish Katharine Hepburn.

She gave the borrowed desk the once-over. Took in the standard-issue beige computer and multi-line desk-phone, a cactus that was being tortured to death by over watering, and a framed photo of a man in his mid-thirties leaning over a woman who hugged a squirming three-year-old boy on her knee. The kid was a miniature version of the man. Liv wondered which of them the desk belonged to: the man, probably. He looked kind of anal. Whoever usually lived here was suspiciously tidy for a journalist.

But maybe she was just jealous.

She looked at the frozen tableau of joyous family life. Saw the blaze of emotions that shone from the photograph, binding the three people together with invisible but unbreakable bonds. It felt like flicking through the brochure of an amazing holiday destination she would probably never visit.

She pulled her eyes away from the photograph and grabbed a notebook, one of the old-fashioned pads with a big spring on the top. She flipped it open and wrote the date and her location at the top of the first page. In the normal course of things she went through so many of these things it was vital to be able to match their contents to a time and a place.

Next she drew the outline of a human body and traced from memory the pattern of scars she’d seen in the post-mortem photos. When she’d finished, she gazed at the image, each stroke a record of her brother’s suffering.

She turned the page and copied the original pairings of seed letters and symbols from her newspaper as well as every word she’d so far managed to extract from them. Studying the results, she found herself honing in repeatedly on two in particular: ‘Sam’, for obvious reasons; and ‘Ask’, because it stood out. It was one of the few verbs and it read like a command.

Her college professor had told her that all journalism boiled down to this one word. He’d said the difference between a good reporter and a bad one was simply the ability to pose the right question. He’d also told her if she ever got bogged down in a story, to ask the five ‘W’ questions and focus on the gaps.

Liv flipped to a new page and wrote down:

Who — Samuel

What — Committed suicide

When — Yesterday morning at about 8.30 local time

Where — At the Citadel, in the city of Ruin

Why -

The empty line stretched away from the final question. Why had he done it? Ordinarily she would seek out and interview anyone who had spoken to the victim in the run-up to their death, but Arkadian had said that was impossible. The Citadel spoke to no one. It was the silence at the centre of everything.

‘There,’ the office manager said, suddenly reappearing with Liv’s phone and a bulging envelope. ‘I took twenty lira to pay taxi. Receipt is inside. Sign please. .’ She held out a receipt ledger with blue carbon paper separating the pages.

Liv signed and plugged the phone charger into the wall. The screen lit up and the charging symbol appeared. ‘Say, who should I talk to round here to get some background on the Citadel?’

‘Dr Anata. But she very busy with monk story. Maybe too busy to talk about — travel piece. .’

Liv took a deep breath and forced a smile. ‘Well, why don’t you give me her number anyway?’ she said, wishing she’d picked a cover story with a bit more kudos. ‘The least I can do is give her a try.’