The Lost Labyrinth

TWENTY-THREE
I

Knox leaned against the Metro carriage door as a woman in mourning black weaved between the passengers with her right hand outstretched, a swaddled infant cradled against her left hip, reciting a half-hearted plea, not expecting alms, nor getting them either. The tracks were elevated here, offering a view over the city. Nico was right. You could indeed see the Olympic Stadium from a distance, its gleaming white arches towering over ugly suburban housing made even uglier by graffiti and satellite dishes.

He got out at Irini, down the steps and between two shallow ornamental pools onto a windswept concourse. A brass band was somewhat unexpectedly thumping out Souza while marching on the spot, as though playing and moving simultaneously was still beyond them. A mini-cyclone fluttered the pages of a discarded phone-book like applause, while paper bags and empty sweet wrappers whirled in impressively tight circles, like gymnasts with their ribbons.

He took out the scrap of paper on which Nico had scribbled Antonius' address, then asked the people he met until one pointed him on his way. He walked through a vast parking lot, empty except for a few families visiting the swimming pool, from which he could hear splashing and squeals of delight. He hurried across a main road. A woman out walking her dog directed him to a street of plush semidetached homes with sleeping policemen and neat rows of polished cars, interspersed with occasional skips filled with ripped-out carpeting. But there was no such gentrification taking place at Antonius' house, a rotten tooth in an otherwise perfect register. His front garden was a jungle, his walls overrun by ivy. The house had withdrawn into itself, like its owner.

Knox rang the bell. No reply. He put his ear to the door, but the neighbours had the builders in, their hammers and drills making it impossible to hear. He pounded on the front door, then looked up at the first floor windows. Not a sign of life. The letter box attached to the front gate was overflowing with junk mail. His apprehension grew. Maybe Antonius had hated the noise of construction so much that he'd decamped: but with Petitier dead, and Mikhail Nergadze on the loose, it was hard not to worry.

A narrow passageway led down the side of the house. The paintwork was scarred and blistered, as though it had come second in a knife-fight. A sash window was raised a few inches, allowing the house to breathe. He tried it and it lifted easily. Surely Antonius would have locked up properly if he'd left for a few days. He glanced around to make sure that no one was looking, then clambered inside. There was a sour smell to the place, as though something was rotting. 'Hello!' he called out. 'Anyone home?'

No answer. He walked along a short corridor into the kitchen. The shades were down over the back windows; the door was blocked by stacks of crates and boxes. A half-eaten crust of sliced bread on a plate had curled up its corners and turned green.

He turned the other way. The carpet in the downstairs loo was soaked. He reached a gloomy room with a cheap pine table and chairs, their joints splashed with clumsy archipelagos of white glue. The walls were so damp that the old lining paper was peeling freely. Afternoon sunlight through the slat blinds threw a grid on the brown-cord carpet, half-covered by discarded envelopes and their onetime enclosures: bills, summonses, demands, furiously-phrased letters from small tradesmen. A life falling apart.

The hammering next door grew so violent that the walls shook, releasing motes of dust into the air that caught in Knox's throat, so that he had to cough quietly into his fist to clear it.

There was a stack of books on the table, as though Antonius had been going through them. Knox glanced down their spines. Robert Graves, Apollonius, others with equally obvious connections to the golden fleece. There was a pile of Internet print-outs too. He flipped through them. Stories of the mega-rich buying up art and history, names underlined or highlighted. He kept looking until he found a story about Ilya Nergadze celebrating the purchase of a cache of Georgian gold from Turkmenistan.

A green light was blinking on the answer-phone. He pressed play with his knuckle, wary of leaving prints. Beeps and silences mostly, people calling but not leaving messages, save for a woman who yelled abuse and a man demanding payment or else. The last messages were both from Nico, sounding anxious, asking him to call him back. The tape finished and rewound. Knox's sense of foreboding, already strong, turned to fatalism. He went out into the hall and turned towards the stairs, and found what he'd almost been expecting.