The Stonehenge Legacy

1

Mist rolls like vaporous tumbleweed in the dead of the Wiltshire night. Out in the flat, sprawling fields hooded Lookers tilt their heads skywards to witness the first sliver of silver. The moon is new, showing only a faint flash of virginal white beneath a voluminous wrap of black-velvet haute couture.

On the horizon, a pale face turns in its cowl. A fiery torch is raised in an old hand. Hushed but urgent words pass from Looker to Looker. The sacrifice is ready. He has been brought from his fast. Seven days without food. No light, nor sound, nor touch, nor smell. His body has been cleansed of the impurities he has ingested. His senses sharpened. His mind focused on his fate.

The Lookers are robed in hand-woven sackcloth, belted with string plaited from plants, their feet shod in rough animal skins. It is the way of the ancients, the creators of the Craft.

The Cleansers remove the man’s grimy clothes. He will leave this world with no more than he entered it. They pull a ring from his finger. A watch from his wrist. And from around his neck, a crude gold chain dangling a symbol of some false god.

They carry him, fighting, to the river and immerse him. Cold water fills his mouth and gurgles and froths in his corrupted lungs. He struggles like a startled fish, seeking a safe current to escape the hands of his captors.

It is not to be.

Once purified, he is dragged spluttering to the shore. The Bearers fall upon him and bind him with strips of bark to a litter made from pine, the noble tree that stepped with them from the age of ice. They hoist him high on to their shoulders. Carry him like proud and loving men bearing the coffin of a beloved brother. He is precious to them.

Their walk is long — more than two miles. South from the ancient encampment of Durrington. On to the great avenue, down to where the bluestones and the forty-ton sarsens are sited.

The Bearers make no complaints. They know the pain their forefathers suffered moving the mighty stones hundreds of miles. The astroarchitects trekked through hills and valleys, crossed stormy seas. With antlers of red deer and shoulder-blades of cattle, they dug the pits where the circle now stands. Behind the Bearers come the Followers. All male. All dressed identically in hooded, coarse brown robes. They have come from across Britain, Europe and all corners of the globe. For tonight is the new Henge Master’s first sacrifice. An overdue offering to the gods. One that will rejuvenate the spiritual strength of the stones.

The Bearers pause at the Heel Stone, the massive chunk of leaning sandstone that is home to the Sky God. It dwarfs all around it, except the gigantic sarsens standing eighty yards away.

In the centre of the megalithic portal a bonfire flickers in the darkness, its smoking fingers grasping at the moon, illuminating the Henge Master as he raises his hands. He pauses then sweeps them in a slow arc, pressing back the wall of energy surging between him and the horseshoe of towering trilithons.

‘Great gods, I feel your eternal presence. Earth Mother most eternal, Sky Father most supreme, we gather in your adoration and dutifully kneel in your presence.’

The secret congregation of hooded figures sinks silently to the soil. ‘We, your obedient children, the Followers of the Sacreds, are gathered here on the bones of our ancestors to honour you and to show you our devotion and loyalty.’

The Master claps his hands and leaves them joined above his head, fingers pointing in prayer to the heavens. The Bearers rise from their knees. Once more they lift upon their shoulders the naked young man tethered to the rough litter.

‘We thank you, all you great gods who look over us and who bless us. In respect to you and the ways of the ancients, we dedicate this sacrifice.’

The Bearers begin their final journey, out through the giant stone archways towards the sacrificial point that lies on the line of the solstice.

The Slaughter Stone.

They lay the young man upon the long grey slab. The Henge Master looks down and lowers his joined hands to touch the forehead of the sacrifice. He is not afraid to look into the terrorised blue eyes beneath him. He has prepared himself to banish all feelings of compassion. Just as a king would exile a traitor.

He slowly circles his joined hands around the man’s face as he continues the words of the ritual. ‘In the names of our fathers, our mothers, our protectors and our mentors, we absolve you from your earthly sins and through your mortal sacrifice we purify your spirit and speed you on your journey to eternal life in paradise.’

Only now does the Henge Master separate his palms. He spreads them wide. Half of him is lit bone-white by the moon, half blood-red by the fire. His body is in balance with the lunar phase. His silhouette against the great stones is that of a cruciform.

Into each outstretched hand the Bearers place the sacred tools. The Henge Master grips them, his fingers folding around smooth, wooden shafts carved centuries ago.

The first flint axe strikes the head of the sacrifice.

Then the second.

Now the first again.

Blows rain down until bone and skin collapse like an eggshell. With the death of the sacrifice comes a roar from the crowd. A triumphant cheer as the Master moves back, his arms spread wide for them to see the sacrificial blood spattered on his robes and flesh.

‘Just as you shed blood and broke bones to assemble this godly portal to protect us, so too do we shed our blood and break our bones for you.’

One by one the Followers come forward. They dip their fingers in the blood of the sacrifice, mark their foreheads. Then walk back into the main circle and kiss the trilithons.

Blessed and blooded, they bow before silently disappearing into the dark Wiltshire fields.

2

Professor Nathaniel Chase sits at a desk in the oak-walled study of his seventeenth-century country mansion and through the leaded windows watches morning twilight yield to a summer sunrise. It’s a daily battle that he never misses.

A colourful male pheasant struts the lawn, cued by the first light on the dew-soaked grass. Dull females follow in the bird’s wake, then feign disinterest and peck at fat-filled coconut shells strung out by Chase’s gardener.

The male proudly spreads his wings to form a cape of iridescent copper. His head, ears and neck are tropical green and his throat and cheeks an exotic glossed purple. A distinctive white band around his neck gives him a priestly stature while his face and wattle are a deep red. The bird is melanistic — some kind of mutation of the common pheasant. As the professor looks closer, he suspects that a few generations back there must also have been some crossing with a rare green pheasant or two.

Chase is a successful man. More than most ever dream of being. Academically brilliant, he has been hailed as one of Cambridge’s finest brains. His books on art and archaeology have sold globally and built a following beyond those bound to buy them for study. But his vast fortune and luxuriously refined lifestyle don’t come from his learned ways. He left Cambridge many years back and turned his talents to sourcing, identifying, buying and selling some of the rarest artefacts in the world. It was a practice that earned him a regular place in the rich list and a whispered reputation as something of a grave-robber.

The sixty-year-old takes off his brown-framed reading glasses and places them on the antique desk. The matter in hand is pressing but it can wait until the floor show outside is done.

The pheasant’s humble harem break from their feeding to pay the cock the attention he craves. He stomps out a short, jerky dance and leads the buff-brown females towards a stretch of manicured privets. Chase picks up a pair of small binoculars that he keeps by the window. At first he sees nothing except grey-blue sky. He tilts the glasses down and the blurred birds fill the frame. He fiddles with the focus wheel until everything becomes as sharp and crisp as this chilly summer morning. The male is surrounded now and warbling short bursts of song to mark his pleasure. Off to the right lies a shallow nest at the foot of the hedge.

Chase is feeling sensitive, emotional. The display outside his window touches him almost to the point of tears. The male with its many admirers, at the peak of life, vibrant in colour and potency preparing to raise a family. He remembers those days. That feeling. That warmness.

All gone.

Inside the grand house there are no pictures of his dead wife, Marie. Nor any of his estranged son, Gideon. The place is empty. The professor’s days of plumage-spreading are done.

He puts the binoculars down beside the fine casement window and returns to the important paperwork. He picks up a vintage fountain pen, a limited-edition Pelikan Caelum, and savours its weight and balance. One of only five hundred and eighty ever made, a homage to Mercury’s fifty-eight-million-kilometre orbit of the sun. Astronomy has played a vital role in the life of Nathaniel Chase. Too vital, he reflects.

He dips the nib into a solid brass antique inkwell, lets the Pelikan drink its fill and resumes his chore.

It takes Nathaniel an hour to finish writing on the fine cotton-blend paper that bears his own personalised watermark. He meticulously reviews every finished line and contemplates the impact the letter will have on its reader. He blots it, folds it precisely into three, places it into an envelope and seals it with old-fashione d wax and a personalised stamp. Ceremony is important. Especially today.

He places the letter in the middle of the grand desk and sits back, both saddened and relieved to have completed the text.

The sun is now rising above the orchard at the far side of the garden. On another day, he’d walk the grounds, perhaps take lunch in the summerhouse, watch the wildlife in the garden, and then enjoy a mid-afternoon snooze. Another day.

He opens the bottom drawer of the desk and pauses as his gaze falls on what lies in there. In one determined move, he takes out the First World War revolver, puts it to his temple and pulls the trigger.

Outside the blood-spattered window, pheasants squawk and scatter into the grey sky.

3

Gideon Chase quietly puts the phone down and stares blankly at the walls of his office where he’s been reviewing the findings of a dig at a Megalithic temple in Malta.

The policewoman had been clear enough. ‘Your father is dead. He shot himself.’ Looking back, it’s hard to see how she could have been any clearer. No wasted words. No hyperbole. Just a verbal slap to the guts that sucked his breath away. Sure, she’d thrown in a ‘sorry’ somewhere, murmured her condolences, but by then the twenty-eight-year-old’s brilliant professor-in-waiting brain had shut down.

Father. Dead. Shot.

Three small words that painted the biggest imaginable picture. But all he could manage in reply was ‘Oh.’ He asked her to repeat what she’d said to make sure he’d understood. Not that he hadn’t. It was just that he was so embarrassed that he couldn’t say anything other than ‘Oh.’

It has been years since father and son last spoke. One of their bitterest rows. Gideon had stormed out and vowed never to talk to the old goat again and it hadn’t been difficult to keep to his word.

Suicide.

What a shock. The great man had wittered on all his life about being bold, daring and positive. What could be more cowardly than blowing your brains out? Gideon flinches. God, it must have been ugly.

He moves around his small office in a daze. The police want him to travel over to Wiltshire to answer a few questions. Help fill in some blanks. But he’s not sure he can find his way out of the door, let alone to Devizes.

Childhood memories tumble on him like a row of falling dominoes. A big Christmas tree. A melting snowman on the front patch of lawn. A pre-school Gideon coming downstairs in pyjamas to open presents. His father playing with him while his mother cooked enough food to feed a village. He remembers them kissing under the mistletoe while he hugged their legs until they had to pick him up and include him. Then comes the thump. As a six-year-old, enduring the pain of his mother’s death. The silence of the graveyard. The emptiness of their home. The change in his father. The loneliness of boarding school.

He has much to think about on the journey south to Wiltshire, the county where his mother had been born, the place she’d always lovingly called ‘Thomas Hardy Land’.

4

Few know of its existence. A secret vault of cold stone, scaled to epic proportions by prehistoric architects. A place unvisited by the uninitiated.

The Sanctuary of the Followers is an unseen wonder. It is the size of a cathedral and yet a mere bump in the turf on the fields above, almost invisible to the human eye. Below ground, it’s the jewel of an ancient civilisation, the product of a people whose brilliance still baffles the greatest brains of modern times.

Fashioned three thousand years before Christ, the place is an anachronism, a vast temple as out-of-time, breathtaking and impossible as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Buried in its subterranean tombs are the architects of both Stonehenge and the Sanctuary. Their bones rest in the midst of more than two million blocks of stone, quarried from the same sources. Just as the Giza monument was a near-perfect pyramid, the Sanctuary is a near-perfect semi-sphere, a dome arcing over a circular floor, a cold moon sliced in half.

Now footsteps resound through the Descending Passage as though rain is falling into the cavernous chambers. In the candlelight of the Lesser Hall, the Inner Circle gathers. There are five of them, representatives of the giant trilithons sited inside the circle of Stonehenge. All are cloaked and hooded: a sign of respect for generations past, those who gave their lives to create this sacred place.

Upon initiation, Followers become known by the name of a constellation that shares the initial letter of their own first name. This shroud of secrecy is another age-old tradition, an echo of an epoch when the whole world was guided by stars.

Draco is tall and broad and exudes power. He is the most senior, the Keeper of the Inner Circle. His name comes from the Latin for ‘dragon’ and the constellation that almost three thousand years ago cradled the northern world’s all-important pole star.

‘What is being said?’ He gives a flash of perfect teeth beneath his hood. ‘What are they doing?’

The ‘they’ in question are the police, the Wiltshire constabulary, the oldest county police force in the country.

Grus, a thickset man in his early fifties, pounces. ‘He shot himself.’

Musca paces thoughtfully, candles casting spectral shadows on the stone walls behind. Although the youngest of them all, his large physical presence dominates the chamber. ‘I never expected him to do this. He was as devoted as any of us.’

‘He was a coward,’ snaps Draco. ‘He knew what we expected of him.’

Grus ignores the outburst. ‘It presents us with certain problems.’

Draco steps closer to him. ‘I read the signs as well as you. We have time enough to ride this storm before the holy nexus.’

‘There was a letter,’ adds Grus. ‘Aquila knows someone working on the investigation and a suicide note was left for his son.’

‘Son?’ Draco casts his mind back and a vague memory surfaces. Nathaniel with a child, a skinny youth with a mop of black hair. ‘I forgot he had a son. Became a teacher at Oxford?’

‘Cambridge. Now he’ll be coming home.’ Grus lays out the implication. ‘Back to his father’s home. And who knows what he might find in there.’

Draco creases his brow and looks fixedly to Musca. ‘Do what must be done. We all thought well of our brother. In life he was our greatest of allies. We must ensure that in death he does not turn out to be our worst of enemies.’

5

An evening mist swirls around the base of the stones, a meteorological sleight of hand creating an archipelago in a sea of clouds. To motorists zipping past on the nearby trunk roads it’s a scenic bonus but to the Followers it is much more.

This is twilight. L’heure bleue. A precious, twice-a-day time between dawn and sunrise, sunset and dusk. When light and dark are in balance and the spirits of the hidden worlds find a fragile harmony.

The Henge Master understands. He knows that nautical twilight comes first, as the sun sinks between six and twelve degrees below the horizon and gives sailors the first reliable readings of the stars. Astronomical twilight follows, as the sun slides from twelve to eighteen degrees below the horizon.

Degrees. Geometry. The position of the sun. A sacred triangle mastered by men like him from century to century. Stonehenge wouldn’t be here without them. Its location is not accidental. Divined by the greatest of ancient augers and archaeoastronomers, its siting was planned by the most advanced of minds. Such was the precision of its build, the circle took more than half a millennium to complete.

And now, more than four millennia later, the Followers lavish upon the stones a similar rapt attention to detail.

The Henge Master assumes his position at exactly the moment that nautical twilight enters astronomical twilight. He stands as still as the bluestone soldiers circled around him, guarding, protecting.

He is alone.

Like an ancient haruspex, he waits patiently for the gods.

And soon, in a soft rustle of voices, they speak. He absorbs their wisdom and knows now what to do. He will worry less about the professor’s suicide and more about the son. He will check that the sacrifice was given a proper burial — it would be disastrous if the remains were to be unearthed. Above all, he will ensure that the second stage of the renewal is completed.

The ceremony must be finished.

The milky vapour rises around his legs. In the wondrous half-light the sarsens come alive. A trick of the eye? A trompe l’œil? He doesn’t think so. The new moon is barely visible to the uneducated but to an archaeoastronomer like him it is a beacon in the cosmos. Across the vaults of heaven, orbital maps arrange themselves, celestial cycles spring into being and with every atom of his body he senses completion of the sun’s shift from Beltane to the solstice.

Seven days to solstitium — the moment the sun stands still. And all attention will be on the dawn. When it really should be on the dusk that will follow.

Five full days will pass after midnight on the solstice, then in the fertile evening twilight of that mystical evening will come the first full moon following solstitium. The time of renewal. When he must return to the Sacreds and complete what he has begun.

The sky has darkened now. The Master looks for Polaris, the North Star, the Lodestar, the brightest light of Ursae Minoris. The closest blink of godliness to the celestial pole. His eyes fall down the black curtain of the sky to the prehistoric earth, to the Slaughter Stone, and he shudders as he hears the command of the Sacreds.

The gods will not tolerate failure.

6

DI Megan Baker wants to forget this particular day. And it’s still a long way from over. The stick-thin thirty-one-year-old has a sick child at home, no husband to help since she kicked him out, and an arsy DCI who has landed her with a messy suicide. Now she must stay late to see the grieving son, face to face. That, and the combination of unpaid bills cluttering her handbag, is enough to start her smoking again. But she doesn’t.

Her parents have said they’ll have Sammy again, they always do — and it’s ‘never a problem’, unless you count the patronising lecture and the scalding looks when she collects her poorly four-year-old daughter several hours later than promised.

But she won’t give up. Being police is what she always wanted. What — despite a failed marriage — she still wants.

A shot of coffee and several sticks of gum take away the craving for nicotine. Her mobile rings and she looks at the caller display. CB — short for Cheating Bastard. She couldn’t bring herself to enter her ex-husband’s real name. Cheating Bastard seemed more appropriate. He is a uniformed inspector in another local division but their paths still cross. Too often. At work and during painful access visits.

CB doesn’t want agreed visits. Oh no. That would cramp his shag-everything-with-a-pulse lifestyle. He expects to turn up whenever he wants to see Sammy. And that’s just not fair. To her daughter or to her.

The urge to throw the ringing mobile at the wall is almost irresistible. She snatches it off her desk a beat before it trips to voicemail. ‘Yes?’ she snaps.

CB also has no time for pleasantries. ‘Why didn’t you tell me Sammy is sick?’

‘She’s got a fever, that’s all. She’ll be fine.’

‘You a doctor now?’

‘You a parent now?’

He emits a laboured sigh. ‘Meg, I’m concerned about my daughter. You’d shout at me if I didn’t ring, now you’re shouting because I have.’

She counts to ten and spits out his name, ‘Adam, Sammy’s fine. Kids pick up bugs at playschool all the time. Her temperature’s high, she was a little sick last night, that’s all.’

‘It’s not measles or one of those things?’

‘No.’ Megan suddenly doubts herself. ‘I don’t think so. Mum’s with her, there is nothing to worry about.’

‘You should be with her. When she’s sick a little girl wants her mum not her grandma.’

‘Go to hell, Adam.’ She hangs up and feels her heart pounding. He always does that to her. Winds her up. Brings her to snapping point.

The desk phone jangles and she nearly jumps out of her skin. It’s reception. Gideon Chase is downstairs. She tells them she is on her way and takes a final slug of the now-cold coffee. Talking to the family of the deceased is never easy.

Reception is empty except for a tall, dark-haired man with shock etched on his pale face. She takes a long breath as she approaches. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Baker. Megan Baker.’ She offers a hand and instantly notices the well-worn blue plaster on her index finger is in danger of coming off.

‘Gideon Chase,’ he murmurs, careful not to dislodge the dubious Band-Aid. ‘Sorry I’m late. The traffic.’

She smiles sympathetically. ‘It’s always bad. Thanks for coming so quickly. I know this must be difficult.’ She opens a door with her swipe card. ‘Let’s go through to the back. We can find somewhere quiet to talk.’

7

To an archaeologist like Gideon Chase, locations and first impressions are of particular importance. A stretch of scorched red Egyptian sand or a dark-green field of English countryside say much about the possible discoveries that lie ahead. The cheap, windowless, wooden door that DI Baker opens and ushers him through does the same.

It’s a dull box, floored in black carpet tiles and walled in shades of scuffed grey. Decor as welcoming as a grave. The only bright thing in the room is the woman DI. Reddish-brown hair, sharply dressed in a russet jersey top and flared black trousers. Gideon perches on an uncomfortable moulded chair and out of curiosity nudges the edge of the table in front of him. It’s bolted to the floor.

Megan Baker is big on first appearances too. With a background in psychology and criminal profiling, she is already appraising the man with dark, Hugh Grant-style hair. He has brown eyes, a full mouth and good cheekbones. His fingernails show no trace of nicotine and have been cut not chewed short. No wedding ring. Many married men don’t wear them but those with strong values do, and he radiates traditionalism. They are epitomised in his blue wool blazer with its leather-patched elbows, an item of dress cultivated in college cloisters rather than council estates. And it doesn’t go with the black cashmere pullover or floppy green shirt. Any woman in his life could have told him that.

She slides an opened envelope over the table. ‘This is the note your father left.’

Gideon looks at it but doesn’t move. It’s spattered with dark marks.

She realises what has caught his attention. ‘I’m sorry. Putting it in a different envelope didn’t seem the right thing to do.’

The right thing to do.

So much of his upbringing has been about the right thing to do. All of it inadequate preparation for the moment you get handed an envelope spattered with the blood of your dead father.

‘Are you all right?’

He fingers a flop of hair from his face and looks up at her. ‘I’m fine.’

They both know he isn’t.

He glances down at the envelope and his own name staring up at him in his father’s copperplate capitals.

For the first time in his life, he is pleased that his father preserved his own eccentric style and used a fountain pen instead of a Biro or felt tip, like the rest of the world seems to do.

Gideon catches himself thinking fondly of the old man and wonders if it’s just a passing moment, if one effect of death is that you suddenly find respect for the things you used to despise. Does it somehow wipe the slate clean and compel you to think only good of those you thought badly of?

He touches the corners of the envelope. Lifts it a little but doesn’t turn it over.

Not yet.

His heart is thumping, like it used to when he and his father argued. He can feel the old man in the letter. He can feel the presence through the parchment. He flips the envelope and pulls it open. As he unfolds the letter, he feels annoyed that the police have read it before him. He understands why: they needed to read it. But they shouldn’t have. It was addressed to him. It was private.

It’s too much to take in. Too much to understand all at once.

He runs his fingertips gently over the letter. Feels the words ‘Dearest Gideon’. Lets the fingers of both hands rest on the line ‘My sweet, wonderful child, I am so proud of what you have become …’ Finally, almost as though he’s reading Braille, his fingers find the words that moved him the most: ‘Forgive me for not being there for you, for not telling you and showing you that I loved you and your mother more than anything in my life.’

Tears well in his eyes. He feels, impossibly, like his father is reaching out to him. The sensation is that of a prisoner and visitor divided by glass, putting their hands together to say goodbye, touching each other emotionally but not physically. Invisibly divided by life and death. The letter has become a wall of glass, the way his father has chosen to say goodbye.

Megan watches without interrupting and with only occasional glances at her wristwatch to quell the rising guilt about keeping her sickly four-year-old waiting at Grandma’s. She can see the suicide letter is tearing Gideon apart.

‘Would you like some time alone?’

He doesn’t react. Grief is packing his head like cotton wool.

She clears her throat. ‘Mr Chase, it’s getting very late now. Would it be possible to make an appointment to see you tomorrow?’

He climbs out of the numbness. ‘What?’

She smiles understandingly. ‘Tomorrow.’ She nods to the letter. ‘There are some things we would like to ask you about. And I suspect you’ll have questions of your own.’

He has a lot of questions and now they start to spill out. ‘How did my father die?’ He looks pained. ‘I know you said he’d shot himself, but what happened exactly? Where was he? What time …’ His voice breaks with emotion. ‘When did he do it?’

Megan doesn’t flinch. ‘He shot himself with a small hand gun.’ She can’t help but add the details: ‘A Webley Mark IV, a First World War pistol.’

‘I didn’t know he even owned a gun.’

‘It was registered in his name. He’d fired it several times at a local range.’

His shock deepens.

She moves on to the more difficult bit. ‘You can see him, if you like. We’ve had official identification from his cleaner, the lady who discovered him, so there’s no need, but if you want to, I can fix it.’

He’s not sure what to say. He certainly does not want to see what remains of his father after he put a bullet through his head. But he feels obliged to. Wouldn’t it be wrong not to? Isn’t it expected?

The DI pushes her chair back and stands. If she doesn’t take the initiative, the dead guy’s son will still have her sitting here at midnight. ‘I’m sorry, we really have to wind this up now.’

‘Forgive me. I know it’s late.’ He picks up the letter, folds it and slides it back into the spattered envelope. ‘Is it all right to take this?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

He places it gently inside his jacket. ‘Thank you. And thank you for staying so late.’

‘No problem.’ Megan produces a card with her details on it. ‘Call me in the morning. We can fix a time then.’

He takes it and follows her out of the room. She guides him through the security-locked doors and out into the dark cold of the night and now-empty streets.

As the door clacks shut behind them, Gideon feels numb.

He unlocks the old Audi and sits frozen in the driver’s seat, keys shaking in his hand.

8

The estate is set in a singularly beautiful, historic chalk plateau straddling Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire — not far from the palatial retreat that Guy Ritchie and Madonna once shared.

Gideon has never been here before and trying to find it in the dark has taken more than an hour and proved exhaustingly difficult. He wishes he’d thought things through a little more — booked into a hotel or asked the police to find him somewhere. Now he’s faced with nowhere to sleep unless he breaks into the house.

The fruits of his dead parent’s dubious labour are impressive. The mansion must be worth ten million pounds, maybe more. Perhaps his father’s ‘trade’ — grave-robbing, as Gideon had often called it — was one of the reasons why he had taken his life.

Gideon drives through tall metal gates into a darkened garden as foreboding as a cemetery. The driveway winds on for nearly half a mile before it sweeps around a marble centrepiece with an elaborate fountain that’s lit but not working. Soft, yellow garden lights cast a jaundiced glow through the leaves of ancient trees. He kills the engine and sits for a minute looking at the old house. It’s a shell — empty of life.

He gets out and walks a flagged path around the east wing. While he has no keys, he reasons that he’s unlikely to get into trouble for breaking into a property that’s just been left to him.

He trips another set of security lights and the intense burst of white forces him to blink. There’s a scurry of activity in hedges and undergrowth not far from the house — foxes or rabbits, he guesses.

A security box on a far off wall catches his eye. It probably isn’t primed. If you commit suicide, you don’t set the alarm. And given that the police were sloppy enough not to padlock the front gates, it’s unlikely that they’ve already phoned the company for the key code and appointed someone custodian.

He peers through the panes of a quaint orangery attached to the side of the building and can’t quite bring himself to break in. A little further down he looks inside a laundry-cum-storage room. The door is modern. Less expensive to replace than anything else he’s seen so far.

A good whack with the heel of his boot should do it. A solid boot somewhere around the lock. He takes a closer look. Best to get things right before you go hoofing away.

The door jamb around the handle looks already splintered.

He gives it a push and it opens.

‘Damn.’ Gideon curses the police. Unlocked gates and now a damaged door that should have been secured.

The air inside the house is stale and dry. Was this how the police entered? A crazy kick and rush by local plods after a call from a hysterical housekeeper?

He switches the light on and realises his last thought didn’t make sense. The cleaner who found his father most probably had a key. There would have been no reason for them to break in.

The place must have been burgled.

Or worse still — is in the process of being burgled.

9

Musca has found nothing.

He has ransacked the lounge, searched all eight bedrooms, several bathrooms and two reception rooms and so far he’s found nothing of any value to him. Sure, the old guy’s house is stacked full of fabulously expensive stuff. No doubt a regular burglar would be swinging a full swag bag over his shoulder and whistling a merry little tune as he strolled down the plush halls, but luxury goods are not what Musca came for.

Books, diaries, documentation, photographs, computer files and any form of tape recordings are what he’s hunting in the treasure hunter’s lair.

He’s already wrecked the library. Yanked down, opened up and shaken loose hundreds upon hundreds of old books. Now he’s heading into the study — the place he’s told the professor killed himself.

He walks over to the casement window and closes the thick red curtain. He shines his torch on to the desk, finds an antique brass lamp and flicks it on. In the mellow light, his eyes fall first on the revolving walnut chair, then the Victorian desk and the large dark-red map of blood spread across the cream blotter.

He shivers. The darkness of the house seems to close in on him. Tower above him.

Click.

Musca whirls towards the door. Just natural noises of an old building?

Crack.

He lunges for the lamp switch. Eases away from the desk and slides back towards the door. Leaning against the wall, he wills his heart to slow down.

All is silent.

Then again the soft creak of wood.

He knows now exactly where the sound is coming from. The rear of the house is full of old wooden floorboards, many warped and loose. As he discovered when he came in. He slips his kit bag off his shoulder and dips a hand inside. His fingers close around a small iron crowbar. Perfect for busting open a flimsy back door or a skull.

A moment passes.

Then another.

And another.

He starts to wonder if he’s alone or not. Whether someone’s come in and spotted him. Maybe even called the cops. Musca can’t stand the waiting any longer. He rummages in his trouser pockets and finds his cigarette lighter. If he can’t find anything incriminating, then the least he can do is ensure no one else does.

He pads back to the desk, gingerly slides open a drawer and finds a pack of A4 printer paper. Perfect. He tears open the cover wrapping and holds the flame to a wad of paper until it starts to smoke and catches ablaze. He carries the burning bundle to the curtains, flames flailing into the darkness, and holds the blaze beside the long cloths until they ignite.

The curtains create a roaring column of fire, a furious wash of orange and black. Musca retreats two steps. A tide of smoke rises around him.

As he turns, he sees a tall figure in the doorway.

There’s a small burst of light, like a switch being turned quickly on and off, and then the ghostly silhouette suddenly pulls the door shut. Musca drops the flaming paper and rushes to the thick mahogany door. A key in the lock clicks twice.

He’s trapped.

10

Gideon is no hero.

The first and last time he had a fight was at school — and even then it wasn’t much of a brawl. He took several punches in the face from the year bully and was left with a bloody nose and no money for tuck shop.

He’s filled out a lot since then. Grown bigger and broader. The former is down to genes and the latter to years of rowing at Cambridge. But ever since that harrowing moment he’s developed an acute instinct for danger and an understanding that a quick brain is almost always better than a bully’s quick hands.

Gideon’s already called 999. Now he’s picking his way as silently as possible through the place just to make sure he hasn’t made a silly mistake.

The door to the study yawns open and the light from the hall shows the big, chunky key in the lock. When he sees the figure torching the curtains he makes up his mind to lock the door and keep him there until the cops come.

But now he’s thinking it over.

He’s trapped someone in a burning room and if he doesn’t let them out, they’re going to die. So what? A bit of him really asks that. So what if he dies? Will the world actually miss the kind of low-life that breaks into a dead man’s house and steals from him before he is even laid to rest?

Gideon opens the door.

There’s a roar of flames as the draught blows in. He steps back, arms up to his scorched face. Through a molten wall of orange, a black shape hurtles at him. He is slammed against the wall. His body shudders with the impact. A fist smashes into his left cheekbone. A knee thuds into his crotch. He doubles over in pain. Takes a boot full in the face.

Flat out on the floor, his breath shallow and his lips leaking blood, the last thing Gideon sees before dizziness swallows him is the giant wave of flames and smoke rolling his way.

11

Musca charges across the sprawling lawns behind the manor house, his heart flinging itself against his chest. Above the fizz of the flames he hears the siren — just one car by the sound of it. It’s way past midnight and he knows the police won’t be coming mob-handed. At best, they’ll have despatched that single squad car, with probably a couple of PCs in it.

Still, it was wise to have parked in a lane far behind the estate. The lawns are clear and open and he’s soon able to escape the glare of the lights. Problem is, the darkness is virtually total and he can’t find the exact place in the wall he climbed over — the point that will guide him back to the car.

He stumbles through a clump of thick rose branches and is almost sent sprawling by a molehill so large its owner could probably run for the governorship of California. Finally, he finds the landmark he’d made a mental note of: a greenhouse, the lower half built out of brick and the top of hard wood and double-glazed glass. He counts thirteen paces along the wall and finds the spot he has to climb.

There’s a snag.

When he’d entered the grounds, he’d climbed a small tree on the other side. Dropping ten feet hadn’t been difficult. He’s just over six foot tall, so he’d been able to sling his bag over, dangle from his fingertips and then drop the rest of the way.

Now he can’t get back.

No matter how high he jumps, or even runs and jumps, he can’t get close to the top of the wall. Musca puts the kit bag down and frantically searches for something to stand on. An old compost bin, maybe a spade or garden fork to lean against, or if he’s really lucky a ladder.

There’s nothing.

He glances across the dark lawns. Flames spilling out of the side of the house. The cops have their hands full. He calms down. There’s time enough to do this without making mistakes.

The greenhouse.

He rattles the door. Locked. Through the window he sees wooden racks full of plants. One of those would do just fine. He rushes back to his bag and realises he’s left the crowbar in the old man’s study. Never mind. Brute force will do.

Musca steps back and hammers a heel through the glass and hardwood frame. He jerks the doors open and slips inside.

He’s right, the wooden tables are perfect. He pulls one free from the soil that it’s sunk in, sending dozens of tomato plants spilling as he pulls it outside. He looks again towards the house.

Suspended in the blackness is what appears to be a bouncing ball of light. Torchlight. A cop with a flashlight is checking the grounds — moving quickly towards him.

Musca has killed and is ready to kill again if necessary. He peels away to the left of the light and heaves a heavy stone into the side of the greenhouse.

‘Stop, police!’

He smiles as the torchlight rushes towards the noise. A second later he’s behind the beam and the policeman is slumping unconscious to the ground.

Musca returns to the planting table and jams it against the garden wall.

Twenty seconds later, he’s gone.

12

Megan is listening to her four-year-old’s snuffling and laboured breathing. Every half-hour she wakes and passes a hand over the child’s head. Sammy’s on fire. For the eighth time that night she wets a flannel and gently lays it on her daughter’s forehead.

Her mobile rings. It jerks her out of a tense state of half-sleep and she grabs it before it wakes Sammy.

‘DI Baker.’

‘Inspector, it’s Jack Bentley from the control room.’

‘Hang on,’ she whispers as she climbs out of bed. ‘Give me a second.’ She works her way on to the landing. ‘Okay, go ahead.’

‘We just had an incident in Tollard Royal, the beat officer asked me to call.’

‘Bit off my patch, Jack.’ She glances down the corridor. Her mother is stood at her bedroom door, scowling.

‘I know that, ma’am. There’s been a fire in one of the big houses out there. A burglary too, according to the report. A police officer was assaulted by the offender as he fled the scene.’

‘You need to call me about this?’

‘They’ve taken a civilian to hospital. They found your business card on him.’

Megan turns away from her mother’s accusatory gaze. ‘Do you have a name? What did he look like?’

‘I don’t have a physical, but we ran a trace on a car parked there, an old Audi A4. It’s registered to a Gideon Chase from Cambridge.’

She thinks she knows the answer but still asks the question, ‘Who’s the house owned by?’

Bentley taps up the info on his computer. ‘Property is in the name of a Nathaniel Chase. He’s listed on the electoral roll as the only resident.’

‘He was. The man they’ve taken to hospital is his son. I saw him a few hours ago. He only drove down here because I had to ring him and tell him his father had died.’

‘Poor bugger. Not his night, eh?’ The penny drops with Bentley. ‘Was that the professor chap who shot himself?’

‘The same.’

‘At any rate, two officers turned out, PCs Robin Featherby and Alan Jones. Jones is getting treated for neck injuries and Featherby asked me to call and let you know. Said to say sorry for ringing late but figured best to tell you now than get shouted at tomorrow.’

‘He figured right. Thanks Jack. Have a good night.’

She turns her phone off just as her mother slips into the bedroom to check on Sammy. They’re going to have a row. She just knows they are. Rather than do that, she slopes off downstairs to make a cup of tea.

As the kettle boils, Megan recalls her brief meeting with Gideon and the strangely disturbing letter from his father. There’s no way this incident at Tollard Royal is just a burglary gone wrong.

No way on earth.

13

When Gideon opens his eyes it’s morning and he thinks he’s back at home in his own bed. In a blink he realises how wrong he is. He’s in hospital. There’d been a fire and a burglary at his dead father’s house and the doctors at Salisbury District had insisted he’d stayed the night, ‘for observation’.

He’s straining to sit up when the matronly form of ward sister Suzie Willoughby appears. ‘You’re awake, then. How are you feeling?’

He touches his head, now throbbing in protest. ‘Sore.’

She lifts a chart off the bottom rail of the bed, glances at it and inspects him more closely. ‘You got a bump on the head, a split lip and a nasty cut to your left cheek, but the X-rays say nothing’s broken.’

‘I should be thankful for small mercies.’

‘Something like that.’ She looks at his cut face. ‘It’s less angry than it was, but maybe we should put a couple of stitches in there.’

‘It’ll be okay, I’m a quick healer.’

She can see he’s squeamish. ‘They don’t hurt. Not like they used to. Have you had a recent tetanus injection?’

‘Not since I was a kid.’

‘We’ll give you one then and just check your blood for infection, better safe than sorry. How’s your throat?’

He feels as though he’s back in boarding school, being checked over by Sister to see if he’s trying to skive lessons. ‘It’s a bit rough, but I’m okay. Actually, I think I’m fine to go home, if that’s all right.’

She gives him a look that says it isn’t. ‘Doctor will be around in about twenty minutes. He’ll give you the once-over and if everything’s fine, then we’ll discharge you.’ She fusses with the thin blankets. ‘I’ll get you something for the headache and some water for the throat. Best you drink lots of water. Flush the system. The fire you got caught in gave off a lot of smoke and you sucked it down into your lungs. You’ll probably be very sore and coughy for a few days.’

He nods gratefully. ‘Thanks.’

As she waddles off, he thinks about what she said. The fire. He remembers everything now: the intruder in his father’s study, the blazing curtains, the fight in the hallway.

The nurse returns with a plastic cup of water and a couple of small tubs of pills. ‘Do you have allergy reactions to paracetamol or ibuprofen?’

‘No.’

She shakes out two paracetamol pills. ‘Take these and if they don’t work, the doctor will give you something stronger.’

He has to drink all the water to swallow them. Vicky — his ex — used to be able to pop pills, any kind, without even a sip of water, but he has to empty half the Thames down his neck to swallow just one. Funny he’s thinking about her today. It must be the whack to the head. It’s more than a year since they broke up. Queen Vic went back to Edinburgh after completing her doctorate, as she’d always threatened to do, and the separation made them both realise that it was the right time to move on. Shame, Gideon thinks, there are times when he still misses her. Like now.

Sister Willoughby is hovering.

‘Do you think you’re up to visitors?’ She sounds almost apologetic.

Gideon’s not sure how to answer. ‘What kind?’

‘The police. There’s a lady Detective Inspector just arrived in reception.’ A hint of mischief twinkles in her eyes. ‘You don’t have to see her if you don’t feel up to it. I can have her sent away.’

‘It’s fine. I’ll see her. Thanks.’ His head throbs out a protest. Megan Baker is emphatically not the kind of company he wants right now.

14

The Inner Circle assembles in one of the outer chambers of the Sanctuary. A waist-high ring of purest beeswax candles casts a spectral glow over the emergency gathering convened by the Keeper.

Musca stands in the centre, disgrace hanging like a stone around his neck.

‘You have failed.’ Draco’s voice cannons off the cavernous stone walls. ‘Failed your brothers, failed our Craft and endangered all we stand for.’

Musca knows better than to protest.

Draco’s voice grows cruel. ‘For the sake of us all, summarise the list of “gifts” you left for the police.’

Musca recites them blankly. ‘A tool bag. There was a crowbar, screwdriver, hammer, duct tape, wire cutters—’

Draco interrupts: ‘And enough DNA to convict you for burglary, arson and perhaps attempted murder.’

‘It’s not traceable to me.’

‘As yet.’

‘I have no criminal record,’ protests Musca. ‘My fingerprints or genetic fingerprints are not on file anywhere.’

Draco slaps him across the face. ‘Don’t add insolence to incompetence. Afford me the respect I deserve as Keeper of the Inner Circle.’

Musca puts a hand to his stinging cheek. ‘I apologise.’

Draco looks across the darkened room. ‘Grus, can we make this evidence go away?’

‘Have it lost?’

Draco nods.

‘Not yet. There is the small matter of the policeman he assaulted as well. But later, yes. I’m confident that can be done.’

‘Good.’ He turns back to Musca. ‘Did anyone see your face?’

‘Not the policeman, it was dark. But the son. I am certain he saw me.’

Draco bounces a question across the chamber: ‘Do we know how he is, where he is?’

The smallest among them, a red-haired brother known as Fornax, answers. ‘He’s in hospital in Salisbury, detained overnight, no serious injuries. He’ll be discharged tomorrow, perhaps even later today.’

Grus speaks out, his voice calm and mature: ‘The Lookers will keep tabs on him as he leaves.’

‘Good.’ Draco has another question for Musca. ‘To be clear, you found nothing inside the house that would alert the world to us?’

‘Nothing. I searched all the rooms. Upstairs and downstairs. There were hundreds — perhaps thousands — of books, but no records, no documentation and no letters that in any way mentioned the Sacreds or our Craft.’

Grus speaks again. ‘Perhaps he remained loyal until the end.’

Draco doesn’t think so. ‘We know of your affection for our lost brother, but it is misplaced. His suicide is more than untimely; it’s selfish and potentially disastrous. He knew what was planned and what was expected of him.’

The Keeper switches his attention back to Musca. ‘You are absolutely certain that there was nothing in that house that referred to us and our Craft?’

‘If there was, there isn’t now. I’m sure the fire destroyed the entire contents of the study.’

Draco’s anger and anxiety subside. Perhaps the mistake with the forgotten bag is the price that has to be paid for a cleansing fire that safeguards the secrecy of the Craft. But a bigger problem remains. Nathaniel Chase had a vital role to play in the Craft’s destiny. A key position in the second phase of the ceremony.

Now he’s gone, that role has to be filled.

And quickly.

15

Megan Baker smoothes out her charcoal-grey mid-length suit skirt and sits on the hard chair next to Gideon’s bed. ‘So, what on earth happened to you?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t remember much.’

She glances to the nurse now at her side. ‘Is there somewhere more private than this? A place he and I can talk?’

The nurse has to think for a second. ‘There’s an examination room down the corridor.’ She points. ‘Use that. Flip the sign on the door so you don’t get disturbed.’

Megan looks back towards Gideon. ‘Are you good to walk?’

‘Sure. I’m fine.’ He slowly swings his legs out of bed, taking care the ill-fitting pyjamas don’t reveal more of him than is acceptable. ‘Forgive my appearance.’ He gestures to the striped and faded flannels that finish way above his ankles.

They enter the room and the nurse leaves them.

Megan flips the sign to ‘Engaged’, shuts the door and pulls out two chairs, one from behind a desk. ‘So what happened after you left the police station?’

He feels stupid. ‘I hadn’t really thought things through. After I left you, I realised I didn’t have anywhere to stay. It seemed like a good idea to go to my father’s and sleep there. I suppose deep down I felt drawn to it.’

‘That’s natural enough.’

‘Maybe. Anyway, the back door had been broken open so I called 999 and went to have a look around.’

She laces one leg over the other. ‘You should have waited until the patrol car arrived. Didn’t they tell you to wait?’

He can’t remember if they did, but he doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble. ‘I suspect so. I just wanted to have a look inside and make sure I hadn’t raised a false alarm.’

‘Which you clearly hadn’t.’

‘No. I hadn’t. I saw this man in my father’s study. He was setting it on fire.’

‘How? What exactly was he doing?’

The image is clear in the archaeologist’s head. ‘He had one hand — his left — full of papers and he lit them with a cigarette lighter, one of those cheap little ones.’

‘Disposable. A BIC?’

‘Something like that. He lit the papers, then set the curtains on fire and was about to do the same with my father’s desk.’

‘When you confronted him?’

‘No, not exactly. At first I just pulled the door shut and locked him in. Then I realised I had to let him out, otherwise he’d have probably died.’

‘Some people might have been tempted to leave him in there.’

‘I was.’

‘Good job you didn’t. I’d be charging you with a criminal offence this morning if you had done.’

‘I know.’

She studies him. He’s an academic, not a fighter. One of those men who looks tall enough and fit enough to handle himself but evidently never learned how.

‘So you opened the door and he just starts laying into you?’

‘Virtually. He pushed me out of the way and I grabbed him around the waist, rugby-style. Only I didn’t take him down and he started punching and kicking me.’

She looks at the bruising. It’s unusual. ‘He cut your cheek quite badly. From the mark, I’d say he was wearing some jewellery on his right hand, maybe a signet ring.’

‘I didn’t notice. Just the pain.’

‘I imagine.’ She lifts her handbag from the floor. ‘You mind if I take a shot of this, the outline is really clear?’

‘I suppose not.’

She slides back the cover on the tiny Cyber-shot that she carries, then virtually blinds him with a camera flash. ‘Sorry,’ she says from behind the lens, ‘just one more.’

Another flash and she clicks it closed. ‘We may want SOCO to look at that.’ She drops the camera back in her bag. ‘If we can catch the guy that laid that ring on you, he should go down for assault, burglary and arson. A nice trio, he could get a good stretch for that.’

‘Could?’

‘Afraid so. The English judiciary will listen to any sob stor ies about him wetting the bed as a child, his father being an alcoholic or such like. They call it mitigating circumstances. Did you get a good look at him?’

Disappointment shows on Gideon’s face. ‘No, I’m afraid not. It all happened so quickly and it was really dark.’

Megan has a degree in psychology and spent two years working on secondment to one of Britain’s top profilers. She can see a lie coming before it’s even crossed a guy’s lips. She frowns and tries to look confused. ‘I don’t quite get it. You clearly noticed the lighter in his hand — the BIC. But you didn’t see his face.’

Gideon feels uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know. I guess my eyes were drawn to the flame.’

‘I can understand that. But despite all the light from the fire — from the papers in his hand and from the blazing curtains — you didn’t get at least enough of a look at him to give a rough description?’

He shrugs. ‘Sorry.’

‘Mr Chase, I want to help you. But you’re going to have to trust me.’

He looks surprised. ‘I do. Why wouldn’t I?’

She ignores the question. ‘Are you sure you can’t tell us anything about the man. His size? Weight? Hair colour? Clothing? Anything?’

He can feel her eyes boring through him but he’s staying silent. He has a photograph of the man, snapped on his mobile phone, just before he’d shut the door. The burglar must have been there in connection with his father’s secrets, and he intends to discover precisely what they are long before the police do.

Megan is still waiting for an answer.

He shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t help you.’

She flashes him a smile so bright he nearly flinches. ‘You will,’ she says with an icy coldness. ‘Believe me, you will.’

16

Protecting the precious stones principally means stopping people from climbing on them or defacing them. To that end, English Heritage has erected fences, traffic barriers and ropes, and only allows people into the roped-off relics on special occasions or with written permission.

The government-funded body is good at its job but has no idea just how devoted some of its subcontracted security staff are. The likes of Sean Grabb are devout members of the Followers of the Sacreds. Long after their paid shifts have finished, they still watch the precious site.

Thirty-five-year-old Grabb is one of those sleeves-rolled-up, slightly overweight guys who always gets a job done and is never short of a good word for those who work for him. He heads up a team of Lookers who keep Stonehenge under constant vigil. Three hundred and sixty degrees. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

He and his Lookers never stop looking. Some of it is done openly during the Heritage-paid shifts, some covertly by tiny remote cameras strategically placed across the landscape.

Grabb has been a Looker for ten years. Known inside the Craft as Serpens, he is following in the deep footsteps of his father, grandfather and every other traceable male in the paternal line. With him today is twenty-five-year-old Lee Johns, a relatively new recruit, yet to be formally admitted into the Craft’s hallowed ranks. He’s tall and thin with pimply, undernourished skin and, outside of his work uniform, lives in unwashed denims and rock band T-shirts. He’s not too bright and has weathered his share of problems, including drugs and homelessness. By his early twenties, society had written him off as an eco-hippie troublemaker. For a while he sought solace in the company of other protestors and agitators. He never totally fitted in.

His life started to have meaning only when he drifted down to Stonehenge en route to Glastonbury, where he’d hoped to score some cheap gear and maybe string together a bit of money from low-level dealing. But he never made it to the music gathering. The solstice was so breathtaking he felt unable to even move from the henge. He stayed, helping clear up and volunteering for any kind of work in relation to the magical stones.

He’s been working with Sean for close on three years now and they have something of a master and apprentice relationship. Sean is his sponsor and dispenses wisdom as regularly as he does the sludgy brown tea from his trusty flask. Every watch he quizzes his protégé in the effort to ensure he’s fit to be admitted into the closed circle of the Followers.

‘Question one.’ Grabb gives his pupil a pay-attention stare. ‘What are the stones and what do they mean to those of us in the Craft?’

Johns grins — an easy one. ‘The stones are our Sacreds. They are the source of all our earthly energy. They are our protectors, our guardians and our life force.’

Grabb splashes a reward of tea into Lee’s brown-ringed mug. ‘Good. And why do the Sacreds bestow such blessings on us?’

Johns cradles the dark elixir as they stand by the traffic barrier on the car park. ‘We are the Followers of the Sacreds, descendants of those who placed the great ones here thousands of years ago. The bones and blood of our ancestors nourish the Sacreds in their resting places, just as one day our remains will follow them and complete the circle.’

Steam wafts from the top of Grabb’s steel thermos cup. He sips the hot tea and asks, ‘And how do the Sacreds bless us?’

‘With their spiritual energy. They transfer it through the stones to us and their blessing protects us from the ravages of illness and the humiliation of poverty.’

Grabb is pleased. His pupil is learning his catechism well and that can only reflect kindly on him. He pours more tea into Lee’s mug. ‘And what do the Sacreds expect in return?’

‘Respect.’ He pronounces the word with sincerity. ‘We must recognise them, respect them, have faith in them and follow their teachings through their appointed oracle, the Henge Master.’

‘That’s right, Lee. Remember those who would steal our heritage. Remember the Catholics and their commandments written in stone supposedly passed down from God. They cooked up that story two thousand years after the Sacreds had been established here in England.’

Lee nods. He understands. He must not be sidetracked or seduced by other religions, false-belief systems that have big gold glittering palaces for adoration, that collect money each week from congregations and create their own banks and states. ‘Sean,’ he starts, thirsty for reassurance. ‘I know you can trace your bloodline all the way back to the greats who carried the bluestones and the sarsens. I understand why that makes you worthy for the blessing and protection of the Sacreds, but what about people like me? We’re outsiders. We don’t come from around here.’

Grabb recognises the insecurity; it’s a regular thing with Lee. ‘We are all from around here, my friend. Five thousand years ago the population of Britain was tiny. Way back then, you and I were probably brothers, or cousins at worst.’

Johns likes that idea. And it makes sense too. Even the Christians believe in Adam and Eve and how one moment of sex somehow spawned all of mankind. Or something like that, he can’t quite remember. Brothers — him and Sean.

‘You’re doing real well, Lee.’ Grabb puts a broad arm around the kid’s near skeletal shoulders and shows him how proud he is.

But in reality he’s worried — worried about how his protégé will face up to the horrors of the challenge that awaits.

17

After a tetanus shot and what he viewed as a completely unnecessary taking of blood, Gideon is discharged from hospital in the late afternoon. The only good thing is that the DI was able to get the keys to his father’s house biked over before the discharge was completed.

Approaching the grand house in a taxi from the hospital, he can see that the damage is considerable. The lawns have been churned up by fire engines and the side of the building is shrouded in the remnants of black smoke. Windows are blown in and boarded up, brickwork cracked.

Right now he doesn’t care. The place is still just bricks and mortar to him. Only when he lets himself in through the colossal front door does he feel any emotion.

When his mother died, Gideon was distraught. He went from being confident and extrovert, trusting in the world and his place in it, to being disturbingly introverted and wary of people. The death of his father is bringing on another change. He is uncertain of what but he feels it. Inside him is a volatile mix of anger, frustration, resentment and a residue of unfairness. A swirling blend of components that he knows is going to alter the DNA of his personality irrevocably.

He wanders the big empty house and feels acutely alone. He has no brothers or sisters, no grandparents. No children. He is the end of the Chase line. What he does with the remainder of his life will determine not only what the world thinks of him but the whole Chase lineage.

He drops his jacket in the hall. Climbs the grand staircase to a long open first-floor landing and searches for a place to wash and crash for a while.

The house is plainly not equipped for life four hundred years after it was built. The big rooms with their high ceilings must cost a fortune to heat. No wonder his father appears to have lived in only a couple. The windows are draughty and need replacing. Most of the walls are flaked with damp. Floors creak worse than the planks of an old sailing ship in a storm and it must be fifty years since the place saw a decent lick of paint.

His father’s bedroom is the smallest of all and gives him the strangest of feelings. It’s crammed with emptiness. The old man’s things are everywhere but they have become depersonalised, as though blasted with some radioactivity that eradicated all trace of him.

A pile of books towers by the bed. Near them is a white mug, an inch of tea still in it, a crust of mould on the surface. He guesses it was the last morning cuppa or late-night drink his father tasted.

The quilt is pulled back on one side of the high, wooden-framed double bed. The indent in the old spring mattress, grey base sheet and crumpled feather pillow show exactly where Nathaniel slept. The other side of the bed is pristine. Gideon feels himself frown. For all Nathaniel’s legendary brilliance and inarguable wealth, his father lived like a squatter and died lonely.

He casts a last look around the little bedroom and notices the remains of an old bell circuit above the door, a hangover from the time a nanny or butler slept here waiting to be called by the master of the house. He is reminded of a boyhood visit one wet weekend to a National Trust home and the single interesting comment from the tour guide: the property, he’d said, was veined with secret passages so servants could pass quickly and discreetly from upstairs to downstairs.

Gideon wonders if his father’s place is the same. He steps out into the corridor, kicking up a swirl of dust motes. He ponders if there’s another room behind Nathaniel’s tiny bedroom.

There isn’t.

The landing runs down to a casement window overlooking the garden. He walks down and to his right sees an odd join in the wallpaper. He taps the wall. It sounds like plasterboard. He knocks a metre to the left and then a metre to the right.

Stone.

He taps again on the board. All over and around it. The plasterboard area is big enough to be a door. There’s no visible handle or hinges, but he’s sure it is. He gets down on his knees and digs, just as he would in an archaeological trench. His fingers find the edge where the skirting board meets the landing floor. He tries to pull it open but it is jammed tight. Out of frustration he pushes rather than pulls.

It bursts open, belching out a breath of musty air.

Gideon bolts upright. A sliver of darkness is cut into the wall. He reaches inside and finds a light switch. He is astonished by what he sees: a narrow room like a very long cupboard. One wall is stacked floor to ceiling with books. Another contains old VHS tapes, some DVDs. Set into the far wall is an old pre-HD plasma TV.

His mind trips into overdrive. Why did his father have a hidden room? What’s on the tapes — and why are they in this place? Why are dozens of books in here and not on show downstairs?

Why was his father so determined to keep all this secret?