Equinox

'But surely you've got buddies at the station? You must have found out something. Jesus! Surely you're curious?'

Philip poured himself a second cup of tea. Picking up a piece of toast, he said, 'Well, of course I've done some prying. But why should I tell you about it?'

Laura looked shocked.

'You're going back to New York, aren't you? What's the point?'

'I've decided to stay a while.'

'Oh, you have, have you?'

'You don't have to put up with me here if. .'

'Oh, Laura. Of course you can stay, stay as long as you like … If you can put up with the plumbing.'

She smiled suddenly. 'It was Jo's accident. .'

'I realise that, but now?'

'Well, now I'm intrigued. I'm ditching Thomas Bradwardine and thinking more in terms of a modern mystery.'

'Ah-ha. Well, that's honest, I suppose.' 'I wasn't. .'

'OK,' Philip said softly. 'What do you want to know?'

'Well, the whole shebang, Philip.' He laughed out loud and sat back against the pillows. 'You're amazing.' 'So?'

'Well, I don't know all that much. . they don't know that much. Both girls were university students. The first victim, the girl in the car, was Rachel Southgate. Eighteen, a Fresher, daughter of a bishop — Leonard Southgate, a widower living in Surrey. Rachel had three older sisters. The girl in the punt was Jessica Fullerton. Nineteen, just starting her second year. Oxford family, live in a house about a hundred yards from where her body was discovered. An only child — both parents were immensely proud of their academic daughter. As I told you last night, she had the house to herself, parents in Europe. Mum and dad were contacted yesterday. Should be back in Oxford by now'

'Was there anything about the victims that linked them? Apart from the fact that they were both students? Which college were they at?'

'No link. Jessica was at Balliol reading law, Rachel was at Merton studying English.'

'What about physical characteristics? Families? Friends? Did they know each other?'

'Rachel was blonde, tall, slender, Jessica was brunette, shorter, heavier. Both came from vaguely middle-class families. No idea if they knew each other. I guess Monroe's boys are covering that, it's routine stuff.'

Laura nodded and looked out of the bedroom window. It was a fresh, crisp spring morning — yesterday's rain was far away now. 'Doesn't tell us much, does it?'

'I called one of the guys at the station for an update last night,' Philip said after a while. 'Forensics have found that the two coins are solid precious metals, but not ancient. They were minted recently and made to look old.'

'The originals must be incredibly rare. But just leaving replicas has to mean something very special to the killer.' Laura paused for a moment. 'Could you sketch them? Didn't they have some figures on them?'

'God, let me think.'

She walked over to a chest of drawers and found a piece of paper and a pencil.

'Actually, we don't need those. I can do better, if you can stomach it.'

'Your camera.'

'If you're feeling athletic, it's in the hall.'

A couple of minutes later Philip had found the close-ups stored on the memory chip in his Nikon, picked one, zoomed in on the coin and turned the camera round so that Laura could see the screen on the back. 'That's about the best one. I could print it out for you.'

Laura did her best to ignore the exposed raw flesh in various shades of red encircling the coin and to focus on the object at the centre of the image. It showed the profile of a head, a thin angular androgynous face with a long noble nose. The person depicted on the silver coin left inside Jessica Fullerton's cranium was wearing some sort of rectangular headpiece. 'I'm sure there were some female figures on the first coin.'

'Yes, I think there were,' Philip replied.

Laura grabbed the notebook. 'Something like this, wasn't it?' She showed Philip her drawing of robed figures holding up a bowl.

'Well, it's no Rembrandt. But yes, it was something along those lines.'

'So what do you think it represents?' 'Search me.'

'And this figure. Looks vaguely familiar,' she said, pointing to the digital image. 'He, she looks like an ancient Egyptian, a Pharaoh, don't you think?'

Philip shrugged. 'Maybe. The other side could be some religious imagery. The Egyptians were sun-worshippers, weren't they? Maybe this bowl,' and Philip pointed to Laura's sketch, 'represents the sun.'

Laura stared at the photographic image and then at the rough sketch she had made. 'I'd really like a print of this.' She tapped the screen. 'And I have to do a little more digging.'

Chapter 11

'Old Fotheringay at St John's told me about Jo's accident,' said James Lightman, turning to Laura as they walked along the corridor leading to his office. The walls, the floor and the ceiling were all limestone and the sound of their shoes echoed around them. Laura followed Lightman up a wide marble staircase, and through a doorway she caught a glimpse of book stacks lining a vast room into which broad shafts of sunlight fell.

'Sorry I didn't call you, James. Things have been, well, a little crazy.'

'Good Lord, Laura, I understand. The good news is that it's kept you with us a little longer. It was only a couple of days ago that you were bidding me farewell.'

'It's given me more research time* a week at least.'

They had reached the Chief Librarian's office and Lightman held the heavy oak door open for Laura. She stepped in and looked around, struck by the familiar old rush of the senses that she had first experienced when she was eighteen. The office was a room with a vaulted ceiling and it was stacked with ancient books, antiquities and curios — a stuffed owl in a glass case, a brass pyramid, strange stringed musical instruments and marquetry boxes from North Africa. She could hear Bach playing faintly in the background.

Little more than a week after going up to Oxford Laura had spent her first morning at the Bodleian revelling in the fact that she had a pass into the most exclusive library in the world. It was a particularly memorable experience. She was in the newly refurbished history of art section when a shelf had collapsed immediately above her head, sending a collection of heavy books down on top of her.

She had been very lucky and was left only with a few bruises along her right arm, but James Lightman had been at her side almost instantly. Taking control in that gentle but firm way of his, he had insisted that she sit down and he had checked that she really was all right. In this same office he had offered her a cup of strong tea and a biscuit and had asked her about herself. It was the start of what was to become a close relationship that had been sustained throughout Laura's time in Oxford. It had survived her move back to America and infrequent visits to England. During her time at the university Lightman had been a kind of a surrogate uncle, a father figure far closer to hand than her real parents six thousand miles to the west. Although they worked in very different areas, they chimed intellectually. Something of a polymath and an eminent scholar, James Lightman was world-renowned as the foremost authority on ancient languages, with a particular interest in Hellenistic-Roman Literature. Laura's favourite era was the Renaissance with its revival of Classical influence in art, and she had heard of James Lightman from a book about Classical painting that she had read when she'd still been a precocious fifteen-year-old high-school kid in Santa Barbara.

Laura had only learned after knowing the man for several months that Lightman had once been married to an heiress, Lady Susanna Gatting of Brill. But she and their daughter Emily had been killed in a car crash in 1981, less than a year before Laura had arrived in Oxford. Emily would have been almost exactly Laura's age if she had lived.