Michael pulled open the entrance doors. On the wall, immediately inside, was a floorplan and a picture of the top-floor roof garden. The garden was smart: stone flagging, interspersed with squares of pebbles, and a covered area where cream awnings stretched across sets of wooden benches.
‘Who pays your rent?’ I asked him.
‘I do.’
‘Bullshit. You work in Redbridge, not Canary Wharf.’
He didn’t reply.
He unlocked the doors into the corridor, and I followed him along to a set of lifts. Doors to our right and left led through to the ground-floor apartments. He called one of the elevators, then turned to me. I was carrying his slipcase over my shoulder and his mobile phone in my hand. The phone had been empty, just like the others, and the laptop, during my brief look at it, needed a six-digit password to get beyond the loading screen.
We rode the elevator up.
When we got to the apartment door, he took out his keys again.
‘This is ridiculous, Da—’
‘Just open the door.’
He unlocked it and we stepped inside.
The apartment was warm. He’d left the heating on. A decent-sized living area bled into an open-plan kitchen, a door leading from it into a bathroom and another into his bedroom. I locked the door and told him to sit in the corner of the room with the lights off. There was enough street light coming in from outside. He did as I asked, his hands no longer tied.
I set the slipcase down and unzipped it. I took out his book and dropped it on the floor, then removed his laptop.
‘Where’s the lead for this?’ I said.
‘At work.’
‘I don’t believe you. Where is it?’
‘At work.’
I took out the gun, moved across the living room and thumped the butt into the side of his head. He jerked sideways, falling off his seat, and rolled on to his back, looking up at me.
‘Shit,’ he said, clutching his face.
‘I’m not playing,’ I said. ‘Where’s the lead?’
He glanced at me, shocked, blood pushing through the skin at the side of his head — then nodded at the TV. There was a power lead snaking out from behind a flatscreen. I took the laptop over to it and plugged it in. It loaded for thirty seconds before stopping at a password screen.
‘What’s your password?’ I asked him.
‘Eleven, forty-one, forty-four.’
I put in the code and the password prompt disappeared.
‘What’s the significance?’ I said.
‘Of what?’
‘The numbers.’
He didn’t reply. I turned and looked at him. He was still nursing the side of his head. He looked woozy. I placed the gun down on the glass table next to me with a clunk. Through the corner of my eye, I saw him looking between me and the gun.
The desktop appeared, loaded with folders. There were four on the right of the screen — Monthly Budgets, Twenties Group, December Sermons and December Scripture — and a further two on the left, Pictures and Contacts. I clicked on Contacts. A second password prompt came up. I tapped in the same code. This time the prompt box juddered and told me I’d put in the wrong password.
‘What’s the password for the folders?’ I asked him, trying Monthly Budgets. It opened immediately, and was full of Excel spreadsheets. The others all opened too. I looked across at Michael. ‘What’s the password for the Contacts folder?’
He just stared at me.
‘You want me to hurt you again?’
He stared at me. Unmoved.
‘What’s the password for the Contacts folder?’
‘Go to the folder marked Pictures.’
‘Give me the password for the Contacts folder.’
‘Humour me.’
‘Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?’
‘Please,’ he said quietly.
My eyes lingered on him, then I double-clicked on the Pictures folder. There were a series of files, about thirty, with filenames like ‘thelastsupper.jpg’ and ‘jesusandpeter_water.jpg’. I opened a couple up. They were paintings of biblical scenes: the virgin birth; Jesus being tempted by the devil; the parable of the two sons; Jesus on the cross.
‘Open “widow-underscore-nain”,’ he said.
‘I haven’t got time for a sermon.’
‘It might answer a few questions for you.’
I looked for the file and found the name halfway down the list. It was a painting of Jesus standing over an open coffin, a widow beside him. A man was sitting up in the coffin.
‘Do you know what the significance of the numbers eleven, forty-one, forty-four are?’
I glanced at him. The expression in his face worried me. He looked like he’d worked out a plan in his head. A way to get back at me. A way to force my hand.
‘Come on, David. We both know why you’re here, why you didn’t turn around and walk the other way the moment you started to feel like you’d waded too deep into the swamp.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘You know what that painting is of? It’s the raising of a man in Nain. Jesus and his disciples visited there after leaving Capernaum, and came across a funeral procession. When Jesus saw the widow weeping for her dead son, he felt compassion for her. He understood her torment, experienced it, almost as if he’d experienced the loss of the boy himself. And he felt so much compassion for the widow that he raised her son from the dead. He raised him from the dead.’
‘What’s the password for the Contacts folder?’
‘There are three accounts of Jesus bringing someone back to life in the Gospels. The young man in Nain, which is in Luke; the daughter of Jairus, which is in all of them except John; and, of course —’
‘What’s the password for the Contac—’
‘— the raising of Lazarus.’
I looked at him and he smiled a little.
‘Some scholars argue that the story of the young man in Nain and the raising of Lazarus are, in fact, one and the same. If that were the case, that would reduce the number of resurrections down to two, Jesus’s own notwithstanding.’
I thought of the photograph of Alex. ‘What’s Lazarus?’
‘Two resurrections.’
‘What’s Lazarus?’
‘I guess, in a way, that’s what you’ve been looking for.’
I picked up the gun.
‘What’s Lazarus?’
‘Two resurrections, right? Alex — and your wife.’
I shot across the living room, rage boiling in me, and wrapped a hand around his throat. He looked up at me, his face reddening as I started to shut off the air to his brain. I pushed the gun into his mouth.
‘Mention her again.’
He blinked once. I stared into his eyes, knowing I was on the cusp of losing control, but knowing even more that what he had said was right. That I’d got this far, waded this deep into the swamp, because somewhere, deep down, I wanted to find Derryn like Mary had found Alex. This wasn’t just a disappearance to me. This was something more.
He blinked again.
This time his expression changed. He was backing down. I released the pressure on his throat, and he breathed; a long drawn-out grasp for air.
‘Don’t ever mention her again.’
He held up both hands.
‘Now tell me what Lazarus is.’
‘Eleven, forty-one, forty-four,’ he said, slightly hoarse.
‘No more riddles.’
‘John, chapter eleven, verse forty-one to forty-four. The raising of Lazarus. When we recruit people, when we help them, that’s what we promise them.’