Sanctus

Chapter 90

Liv didn’t need the map to find the Citadel. All she’d had to do was head in its general direction until the main flow of tourist traffic picked her up and swept her along, all the way past the ticket stands, through the gates and up the narrow streets towards the most famous mountain in the world.

She had never really appreciated how ancient the place was until she entered this, the oldest part of it. The streets here were cobbled, but it was the buildings on either side that really brought it home. They were all tiny, with miniature windows and low doors, built for people with bad diets and hard lives who seldom lived beyond thirty. They were also constructed and repaired from various bits of material salvaged from throughout the city’s long history. Roman pillars emerged from medieval walls with the gaps between filled with oak beams and wattle and daub. She passed a partially opened door with an iron hand of Fatima curling downwards from its centre, a reminder of the long Moorish occupation of the city during the time of the Crusades. Beyond it lay a small courtyard surrounded by scalloped arches and bursting with assorted greenery, lemon trees in blossom, and banana plants unfurling their long scrolled leaves, all spilling out over elaborately mosaiced walls and floor. The next house along looked like an eighteenth-century Italian townhouse; the one next to that half Ancient Greek villa, half Napoleonic fort. Occasionally a gap would open up between the mis-matched houses and she would see modern buildings on the plains below, stretching away in the distance, clear to the red-rocked, serrated edge of the mountains that enclosed the city on all sides.

A breeze tumbled down the narrow street bringing warm air and a smell of food, which reminded her how hungry she was. She drifted upwards, drawn to the stall from which the tempting aromas had come. It sold flat breads and dips, another reminder of how the city had sucked up different influences over the centuries. For all the bloody history that had swirled around the Citadel, and all the religious wars that had been waged in its shadow, all that now remained of those lost empires were the solid staples of architecture and good food.

Liv fished a banknote out of the petty cash envelope and exchanged it for a triangular piece of bread, studded with seeds, and a tub of baba ghanoush. She scooped up the thick paste and shovelled it into her mouth. It was smoky and garlicky, a mixture of toasted sesame oil, roasted aubergine, and cumin with some other spices dancing around in the background. It was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. She dipped the bread back in the pot, and had just loaded it up again when her phone rang in her pocket. She stuffed the bread in her mouth and reached for it.

‘Hello,’ she said through a mouthful of food.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Rawls yelled down the phone. Liv groaned inwardly. She’d turned her phone on when she’d left the newspaper offices so the Ruinologist could contact her; she’d forgotten all about Rawls.

‘I’m worried sick over here,’ he hollered. ‘I just saw you on CNN getting bundled into the back of a police cruiser. What the hell’s going on over there?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Liv replied through a mouthful of food. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So why didn’t you call me? I told the girl at the office to get you to call me.’

‘Must’ve slipped her mind. She seemed a little ditzy.’

‘So tell me what’s going on.’

This was exactly the conversation she’d hoped to avoid. ‘I’m just trying to find out what happened to my brother,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.’

‘You sound out of breath.’

‘I am out of breath. I’m walking quickly up a really steep hill.’

‘Oh right. Well you still shouldn’t be wheezing that way. You need to look after yourself. You should quit smoking.’

Liv realized that, despite the high-stress situation she found herself in, she hadn’t craved a cigarette in hours. ‘I think I have,’ she said.

‘Good. That’s good. Listen, I need you to do one thing for me.’ Here it was. She’d known he couldn’t be calling out of overwhelming concern for her wellbeing. ‘Write down this number,’ he said.

‘Hold on.’ She grabbed her pen and scribbled the number on her hand.

‘Who’s this?’ she asked.

‘It’s that traffic cop you watched give birth to twins the other night.’

‘Bonnie?’

‘Yeah, Bonnie. Listen I know this is a real bad time, but I need that story to run this weekend. I still got a hole in the Lifestyle section, so I need you to call her up and smooth the way for someone else to pick up the story, OK?’

‘I’ll call her right now. Anything else?’

‘No, that’s it. Just you be careful — and take lots of notes.’ Liv smiled.

‘I’m always careful,’ she said. Then she hung up.

Rawls snapped his phone shut and closed his front door. He was late for a fundraiser over at City Hall and wanted to meet the guy everyone was tipping as the next mayor. It always paid to get close to the incoming king.

He slid behind the wheel of his Mustang, absolutely nothing to do with his midlife crisis, and was about to turn the key in the ignition when he heard the tap on the window. He turned and saw the wide muzzle of a gun pointing at him. The man who held it motioned for him to wind the window down. He was wearing some kind of red windcheater and had a beard that looked wrong on his young, thin face.

Rawls held his hands up and did as he was told. When the window was halfway down a large bottle of mineral water was pushed through the gap. ‘Hold this,’ the gunman said. Rawls took it. ‘What do you want?’ He noticed the fumy smell clinging to the plastic bottle and realized it didn’t contain water at all.

‘I want your silence,’ the man replied, and fired a piece of burning magnesium from the flare gun, through the bottle of turpentine and into Rawls Baker’s chest.