‘The body of Christ,’ he murmured.
As Stratton consumed the wafer, he replaced the salver on the altar and picked up an ornate goblet.
‘The blood of Christ.’
He held the goblet forward, but Stratton didn’t move. He had a blank look on his face, as though his mind were a million miles away.
‘The blood of Christ,’ the priest repeated, and Stratton blinked. He took the goblet but before he was able to hold it to his lips, it slipped from his hands. Scarlet wine splashed over his shirt and then on to the marble floor of the altar. Stratton stared at it. He barely moved.
‘Idiot!’ Stratton spat at the celebrant, ignoring the fact that it was he who had dropped the cup, not the priest. ‘Idiot!’
Neither the priest nor any of the congregation knew what to do.
It was not yet light in New York City. The CEO of the Grosvenor Group was pissed off to be out of bed. Even more so at the sight of Pieter de Lange, his aggressive South African chief financial officer, standing by the exquisite early Picasso line drawings that hung on the wall in the lobby of his enormous SoHo townhouse. The moment he saw his CEO, Pieter started to gabble.
‘Jesus, Nathan… that shit in Jerusalem… it was him, wasn’t it? It was Stratton. You think they’re not going to find out? You think they’re not going to fucking find out? ’
Nathan put a weary hand over his eyes. ‘We’ve had this conversation before, Pieter. We’re too well connected. Now come on. You look like you could use a cup of coffee…’
‘To hell with your fucking coffee, man. We’ve got to do something about Stratton before he…’
‘Do what, Pieter?’ Nathan snapped. ‘Ask him nicely to keep his mouth shut? Or were you thinking of something more permanent?’ He shook his head. ‘You really don’t get it, do you, Pieter? I’ve told you before. Stratton, and men like him — they’re our bread and butter.’
He turned round and the two men stared at each other in silence.
‘Go and get yourself cleaned up, Pieter, for God’s sake. You smell like a fucking tramp.’
Pieter inhaled deeply. Shakily. But he didn’t say anything. He just turned and headed for the oak-panelled door.
‘Oh, and Pieter?’
The CFO turned.
‘I’ll be very dismayed if anything happens to Alistair Stratton. If anybody decides to take things into their own hands, I will know about it. I have people watching him day and night. You understand that, don’t you?’
Pieter’s face twitched.
‘Don’t you?’
The CFO looked down at the floor. ‘Yes, Nathan,’ he said quietly. And he left the room without another word.
The priest appeared shaken, but determined to finish the service. He had picked up the goblet from the floor, but the pool of wine remained. The congregation, their Communion cut short, had retaken their seats, and it was time now for the dismissal. He raised his voice a little and held his right palm forward.
‘Go in peace,’ he announced, ‘to love and serve the Lord.’
The congregation solemnly intoned their reply: ‘In the name of Christ. Amen.’ There was a moment of awkwardness in the chapel. Of shoe shuffling. The priest looked expectantly at Stratton, who stood up suddenly and looked around the chapel to find all eyes on him. From his front pew, he moved towards the aisle and strode down it, avoiding the gaze of the congregation, his shoes echoing on the flagstones as he went.
Stratton pushed open the heavy oak door of the chapel and squinted as his eyes adjusted from the dimness of the interior to the brightness outside. The door swung shut behind him and it was only a second later, when his eyes had become used to the daylight, that he saw the state of his close-protection men. They were slumped on either side of the doorway, their backs against the front wall of the chapel, each of them bearing exactly the same injury: a small entry wound on the forehead, and a much larger exit wound at the back of the head. The chapel’s wall was spattered with blood and brain matter and the men were quite still.
Stratton’s blood chilled. He looked from left to right. From one corpse to another. And then he looked up. He saw nothing. Just his house, straight ahead, 100 metres away across the lawn. And to his left, at a similar distance, the woodland that extended to the perimeter of his land.
He heard the birds singing in the trees.
He considered running. Or should he go back into the chapel?
He looked at the dead bodies again and an overpowering nausea crashed over him. He felt dizzy. His knees grew weak.
And then he sensed a figure walking around the side of the chapel.
As Stratton turned, his eyes widened. The figure wore a heavy hood that covered his eyes and he remained absolutely silent. He just raised his right hand, which carried a pistol, its barrel lengthened by the addition of a suppressor.
Stratton shook his head just as his legs gave way. He fell to his knees and looked up as the gunman lowered his weapon to keep it aligned with his target’s skull.
‘I know you,’ Stratton said.
Silence.
Stratton bowed his head and closed his eyes. He knew what was coming.
The sound of the round that killed him was just a low thud. Like somebody rapping their knuckles sharply on a door. Stratton didn’t hear it, of course, and his body hadn’t even finished slumping to the floor before the shooter had turned and started moving round to the back of the chapel.
The birds continued to warble in the trees. Their song was only disturbed thirty seconds later when the door of the chapel creaked open again, and a middle-aged lady with neat hair and a tweed skirt screamed at the bloodshed all around her.
The gunman knew he couldn’t rely on speed. Only stealth. By the time the scream from the chapel had caused the birds to fly from the trees, he was already in the cover of the woods. And when — ten minutes later — he heard sirens in the distance, he had reached the northern perimeter of the estate. An old dry-stone wall marked the boundary here, but there was a tumbledown section a couple of metres long. Eventually he managed to climb over it and kept on walking.
A solitary figure, making his way across the countryside.
It was approaching midday when the figure arrived at the tiny railway station of Lesser Michelstone. It was not the nearest to Stratton’s residence, because he knew by now the area would be crawling with police, but at a distance of five kilometres it was the furthest he could reasonably walk. There was no ticket office here, and no other passengers waiting on the platform. A single security camera, but pointing away from the station bench where he sat, his hood still covering his head. In his right hand — the skin of which was blotched, unnaturally smooth in some places, unnaturally wrinkled in others — the hooded man held a fifty-pence piece. He flicked the coin in the air, watched it spin and caught it in a firm grip.
Flick, catch.
Flick, catch.
When the train arrived at the station three minutes later, he pocketed the coin and limped to the edge of the platform. A set of doors stopped immediately in front of him. He pressed the door-release button and awkwardly climbed inside.
There were only three people in the carriage. An old woman with blue-rinsed hair and a young couple necking three seats along. Hardly surprising, he told himself, that people were edgy about train travel just now. He took a seat at the opposite end of the carriage and stared out of the window as the train slid away.
‘Tickets, please…’
The voice of the ticket inspector as he entered the carriage snapped him out of his reverie. The gunman removed a wallet from his pocket and opened it up. It was almost empty. There was nothing in there that could identify him: no credit cards, no ID. Just some cash, the return ticket and a cutting from a newspaper. He had read it a hundred times already over the past few days, but as he waited for the ticket inspector to approach, he read it again now.