Sam watched her limping up the last few steps. “I know what’ll make you feel better,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Stepping out of the house Sam took a sharp turn to the right and made his way towards a shop that he had spotted from the car as they had arrived. Its windows were full of bottles — mostly a vast array of Belgian beers, but there were a few promising-looking larger bottles that made him think that he might find whisky there.
The bell chimed above Sam’s head as he entered the shop, rousing an old man from the back room. Sam scanned the shelves, but all he could see was beer and wine.
“Have you got any whisky?” he asked, more in hope than expectation. The old man nodded and smiled broadly. He shuffled off to the far end of the counter and bent down. When he surfaced he had a bottle in his hand. He slid it across the counter towards Sam.
“Belgian,” he croaked. “Very good. Made in Liège. Only distillery in Belgium. Best in the world.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, privately doubting that he would ever find anything preferable to Islay malts, but he accepted the bottle and scanned the label. The Belgian Owl. It was unfamiliar, but it was single malt and would serve his purposes. “I’ll take it,” he said, and handed over the pre-paid credit card.
Nina stretched out across the bed, her muscles aching and then releasing. She rolled onto her stomach and pulled herself across the mattress. Purdue’s case lay at the foot of the bed, and she knew that the first aid kit was in one of the zipped sections. One by one she opened them and rummaged around.
When she opened the pocket on the lower right hand side, something black and rectangular fell out. She reached down and picked it up. It was a small Moleskin notebook, neatly bound with elastic. Her heart missed a beat.
‘His notebook. I can’t read this… or at least I shouldn’t.’ She slipped a finger under the elastic. ‘Normally I wouldn’t. It’s private. I respect that. But… we are in danger. There’s a lot that he won’t tell me. If there’s any chance that reading this would mean finding out something that could keep us alive further down the line, surely that justifies the intrusion?’
She turned the notebook over in her hand. The strap slipped easily over the corners. ‘Knowing Purdue, it’s probably in code anyway. It’s the kind of precaution he would take. He doesn’t write much down anyway. Chances are it’ll be mostly blank.’ Nina knew that she was working hard to justify opening it. She skirted around the thought that perhaps she wanted to see whether he had written anything about her and was relying on their situations to provide an ethically impeccable excuse. The idea lingered on the edge of her awareness, as hard as she tried to push it away.
“Fuck it,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing ventured…”
She flipped the notebook open to a random page. As she had expected, there was plenty that she did not understand. Coded notes, formulae and strings of numbers that looked like they might be URLs. She opened it to a different page, nearer to the front. Blank pages stared back at her. She tried the back. There she found densely written sheets. Evidently Purdue preferred to start at the back of the book and work towards the front.
In between the pages that Nina found unintelligible she found a few that caught her attention. One was a diagram of some sort, a roughly-sketched pyramid labelled with names. Some were names that she recognized — Sara Stromer, Jefferson Daniels, and Admiral Whitsun. A few were crossed out and repositioned, or punctuated with question marks or other symbols that meant nothing to her. It appeared to outline some kind of hierarchical relationship between them all. ‘So Purdue either knows their positions within the Order of the Black Sun or he’s tried to work it out,’ Nina reasoned. ‘I’m not really surprised either way.’
She flicked through another few pages. Another sketch caught her eye, this time a rough floor plan. Nina recognized the layout. It was the first floor of the east wing of Wrichtishousis, showing the master bedroom and Purdue’s study. Two other large rooms stood adjacent, rooms that had been empty save for a few paintings and sculptures every time Nina had seen them. Now he had drawn in shelves, a desk and chair, and labelled the rooms ‘N. Study’ and N. Library’. Her eyes widened.
Ignoring the pounding of her heart and all the terrified feelings of being trapped that she always felt when she thought of that kind of commitment, Nina pressed on. There was only one other page that she could make any sense of, and that was a list of names. Most were unfamiliar, but a handful rang bells. Jan Provoost. Petrus Christus. Jan van Eyck. Hieronymus Bosch. ‘Artists,’ she thought. ‘I think they’re all Flemish Primitives? Presumably this is something to do with whatever he’s going to be stealing or fencing or whatever it counts as.’
Downstairs the front door opened and closed. Nina jumped. Quickly she slammed the notebook shut and snapped the elastic back into place, then shoved it back into the pocket. She snatched up one of the bandages from the first aid kit and hastily rolled one onto her injured ankle, then limped downstairs to join Sam.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half hour. It display showed the time as half past ten. The street outside was silent and the only noises within the room were the crackling of the fire, the sound of Sam’s pen scratching across paper and the rattle of the keyboard as Nina worked on Purdue’s laptop. A few hours earlier she had raided the kitchen, thrown an assortment of ingredients together to make a thick, hearty soup. The aroma still lingered in the air.
“He’s not back yet.” Nina knew that she was stating the obvious, but she felt she had to say something.
“Want me to go and have a look for him?” Sam offered. “I’d say let’s go together, but you’d probably better not put any more strain on your ankle just now.”
Nina glanced at the clock again. “Hmm… I think we’d be better sticking together. We don’t have phones. If anything happens we’ve no way of figuring it out. Let’s give him until eleven. If he’s not back by then we’ll… I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
She went back to tapping away on the keyboard. Sam poured out another tumbler of whisky for himself, then one for Nina. She thanked him and topped it up with a little water.
“I thought you took it neat?” Sam remarked. “I always remember that night when we were at Purdue’s and he offered me whisky and then asked what you wanted and you took it straight. The look on your face…”
Nina smiled. “Just my standard reaction to being treated like a girl. I like whisky, preferably with a few drops of water to bring out the flavors. I wouldn’t try it with ice again unless we find ourselves in another hot country — and hopefully it’ll be a long time before that happens. When we get home after this, that’ll be me finished with foreign travel for a while.”
Sam clinked his glass against hers. “You and me both,” he said, and turned his attention back to his writing. It was beginning to take shape. The chapters concerning Trish’s careful insinuating herself into Charles Whitsun’s world were nearly finished, painful as they had been to write. As Trish had finagled her way into parties and events to which Charles was invited, Sam had always been there in the background, witness and bodyguard, ready to protect her. Watching her flirt with the man had been difficult enough the first time around. Dredging up the memories now, after everything that had happened, was taxing to say the least.