Morton nodded and for a brief moment Matt thought it was all over. Morton would hand over the package and he and Richard would be on the next train to… wherever. But, of course, it wasn’t going to be as easy as that.
“I have to be sure that you are who you say you are,” Morton rasped. “You have to prove it to me!”
Matt’s head swam. “I’ve already told you. I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can!” Morton was gripping the book so tightly that his fingers had turned white. He looked quickly around the church, once again making sure they weren’t overheard. “Do you see the door?” he asked.
“What door?”
“There!” Morton twitched his head and Matt looked past him to a strange, wooden door set in the stone wall. What was strange about it? It took him a few moments to work it out. It was too small, about half the size of all the other doors in the church. He assumed it must lead out into the street. It was set below a stained-glass window with gloomy paintings on either side. Looking more closely, he saw that there was something carved into the wood. A symbol. It was a pentagram; a star with five points.
“What about it?” Matt asked.
“It’s why I chose this place to meet. It’s in the diary.”
“That’s not possible.” Matt tried to work it out. The diary had been written in the sixteenth century, over four hundred years ago. Parts of this church were older. Parts of it were quite modern. Either way, how could the monk have known about the existence of a single door?
“Of course it’s not possible,” Morton agreed. “But it doesn’t matter. I want you to go through the door and I want you to bring me something from the other side. It doesn’t matter what it is. Whatever you choose will prove to me that you are… who they say you are.”
“What’s on the other side?”
“You tell me. Bring me whatever you find. I’ll wait for you here.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
Morton laughed but without a shred of warmth or humour. “You really do know nothing,” he said. Suddenly his voice was urgent again. “We don’t have time to argue. Do as I say. Do it now. Or I’ll leave and you’ll never hear from me again.”
Matt sighed. He didn’t understand any of it. But there was no point in answering back. He wanted this to be over. This was the only way. He glanced one last time at the bookseller, then went over to the door. Slowly, he reached out, his hand resting on the iron handle. It was only now that he saw that although the door was too small for the church, it was perfectly in proportion to his own height.
It had been built for a child.
He turned the handle. Opened the door. And stepped through.
While Matt and William Morton had been talking, neither of them had heard the front door of the church open again. Nor had they seen the man who had come in. He was dirty, dressed in rags, with a beard and a broken nose. Matt had noticed him in Moore Street when he had come out of the pub, pretending to be drunk.
The man stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to become used to the gloom, then moved down the apse. It didn’t take him long to find the bookseller. Morton was standing next to a half-sized door, shifting his ample weight from one foot to the other as if he was waiting to go into the dentist’s. There was a square parcel, wrapped in brown paper, held in one hand.
The diary.
It seemed that the boy had gone. But the boy wasn’t important. The man with the broken nose had been paid to kill Morton and take the book. If the boy was there, he would die too. But he wasn’t and the man was secretly pleased. Killing children was occasionally necessary but always unpleasant.
He reached into the pocket of his raincoat and took something out. The knife was only about ten centimetres long but that didn’t matter. The man knew how to use it. He could kill with a knife half that size.
The man looked at the altar ahead of him and briefly crossed himself, using the blade of the knife. The point touched his head, his chest, both his shoulders.
Then, with a smile, he moved forward.
It was too hot.
That was Matt’s first thought. When he had gone into the church, it had been a normal, London summer’s day. That is, it had been sunny but cool and most people had been glad it wasn’t raining. He had only been in the church for a few minutes but in that time the sun seemed to have intensified. And the sky was the wrong colour. It was a vivid, Mediterranean blue. All the clouds had disappeared.
And that wasn’t the only thing that was wrong.
Matt hadn’t been sure what he would find on the other side of the door. He had been half expecting to step back out into Moore Street. Instead he was in a cloister, a covered walkway forming a square around a courtyard with a fountain in the middle. Well, there was nothing surprising about that. Lots of churches had cloisters. It was where the priests went to walk and to think about their next sermon or whatever.
But this cloister was completely different from the church. It looked older – and more beautiful. The pillars of the arches were more ornate. And the fountain was really lovely, carved from some sort of white stone, with crystal-clear water splashing down from one basin to another. Matt knew almost nothing about art or architecture but even he could see that there was something about the fountain that wasn’t quite English. The same was true of the whole cloister. He cast his eyes from the perfectly mown grass to the brilliant flowers tumbling out of huge terracotta pots. How could a church as shabby and as neglected as St Meredith’s have managed to hold on to a courtyard as perfect as this?
He looked back at the church he’d just left. And that was another thing. Was he going mad or was the brickwork somehow different on the outside? There was a square tower rising up above him but no sign of a steeple, modern or otherwise. Well, perhaps it was hidden by the angle of the wall. But even so, Matt had to fight to stop himself thinking an absurd thought.
This was a completely different building from the one he’d just come out of.
No.
It was some sort of illusion. William Morton was deliberately trying to trick him.
The bookseller had told him to bring something back with him. It didn’t matter what and he didn’t care. All Matt wanted to do was to get out of here, to get back onto familiar ground. He walked forward and plucked a bright, mauve flower from one of the pots. He felt stupid, holding a flower, but he couldn’t see anything else and he didn’t want to spend any more time here searching. He turned round and was about to walk back when someone stepped in front of him. It was a young man, dressed in a brown robe. A monk.
And there was Matt, in his jeans and hooded sweatshirt, caught picking flowers in the middle of the cloister.
“Hi!” Matt didn’t know what to say. He held up the flower. “I was told to get this. It’s for a friend.”
The monk spoke to him. But not in English. Listening to the strange language, Matt thought it might be Spanish or Italian. The monk didn’t sound angry. He was trying to be friendly – although he was obviously puzzled.
“Do you speak English?” Matt asked.
The monk held up a finger and a thumb, almost touching. The universal symbol for “a little”.
“I have to go,” Matt said. He pointed at the door. “I have a friend…”
The monk didn’t try to stop him. Matt opened the door and went through.
He was back in St Meredith’s.
But William Morton wasn’t there.
Matt looked around, feeling increasingly foolish with the flower in his hand. It seemed that the bookseller had been playing a trick on him. While Matt had been out in the cloister, Morton had made his getaway. He had never intended to hand over the diary. It was all for nothing.
And then the woman screamed.