‘But… but, they’re devils! They’ll have ulterior motives!’
‘Everyone has those, my friend. Even angels. Anyway, sometimes we mortal men have little choice in the matter. The world belongs to them, really. God gave it to them to squabble and fight over. That’s why everything’s such a mess. Anyway, I really have to go. I suggest you go and read the paper. Page six. And I assure you I had nothing to do with it.’
Nothing to do with it? Those ominous words still ringing in my ears, I hung up the phone, walked back to the kitchen table, sat down and spread the newspaper out at page six. And then my heart missed a beat and my breath caught in my throat as I looked at the photo and the caption on top of the small article. As I sat and stared, growing more horrified by the moment, there was a soft, slicing sound from just behind me and the page was suddenly covered with splattered drops of blood, blotting and soaking into the page, mixing and swirling with the black ink used to print the dreadful story.
In horror, I leaped from my chair and whipped round to stare behind me, half expecting to see some devil with a dripping carving knife. But there was nothing. The kitchen was completely deserted. I raised a hand to my face, wondering if a spontaneous nosebleed had caused the newspaper to become spotted with blood. But it wasn’t me who was bleeding. At a loss, I turned back to gaze at the newspaper but, to my astonishment, the page was quite unmarked. There were no longer any swollen beads of blood staining the article. Cautiously, I picked up the paper and ran my hand over the surface. It was bone dry. Once again, I felt that terrible tugging sensation from within — as if laughing, mocking devils were tugging at my sanity, madly determined to have it from me.
With an effort, I sat back down at the table and re-read the article. The mystery woman now had a name. And she was also now dead. Her body had been found yesterday morning in a seaweed- and barnacle-covered crate left beneath the Holocaust Memorial during the night… ‘ Neville Chamberlain’s Weeping Willow is weeping still ’ …
When people had noticed the box yesterday, bomb diffusers had been called for in the fear that the box contained explosives. But as soon as the crate had been prised open, a mass of water had rushed out and with it, the body of a woman. Her name was Anna Sovanak and she was a scientist working on developing new medicines in Budapest. She had disappeared a few months ago, back in June, while holidaying with her family in Italy. There had simply been no trace of her, not a single clue for the authorities to build a case upon. She had just gone for a walk on the coast after storming out of the villa, having argued with her husband, and had not been seen again. Eventually, it was assumed that she must have decided to go swimming and had been overcome by savage currents that had swept her out to sea.
The paper confirmed that the water from the crate had indeed been salt water and that the unfortunate woman had most likely been in this crate at the bottom of the ocean since her death, which was estimated to have taken place in June soon after her disappearance. She had died from a precisely applied stab wound to the neck, which would have killed her virtually instantly. Anna Sovanak was from a long line of Jews and, together with the fact that her body had been left beneath the Holocaust Memorial, police had officially concluded that this was a simple anti-Semitism inspired killing. An isolated incident of prejudice and hatred. They were following several leads and were sure to catch those responsible soon… very soon… How very comforting…
I gazed at the article incredulously for some time. Why would anyone go to the trouble of concealing the body in the Mediterranean, only to bring it up months later and somehow transport it to Hungary, without anybody noticing, to leave it beneath the Holocaust Memorial? How could this even remotely be classed as a straightforward, isolated incident? Were the police utterly incompetent? And what of the journalists? Why was such a story toiling away on page six with no more than three or four paragraphs? Surely this was front-page news? Was I in the middle of some huge conspiracy that everyone else was in on?
And it was horrifying that she had been dead since June, for I had seen her just last month in Budapest. Was I truly losing my mind? I thought back over it all and realised triumphantly that I was not the only one to have seen her. We had both been attacked by muggers that night… But had they seen her or had they just seen a man running through the streets on his own? I had seen men step out behind her. But I had not seen them touch her, or speak to her, or step towards her, or acknowledge her presence in any way. When it was all over, she had been gone, faded softly from the alley like some wandering ghost.
But, no, there had been one other. The boy at the Basilica. The dying boy, I realised with a sinking heart. The child whose body was disease-ridden, causing his hair to fall out and his skin to turn grey. A pale shadow like me, not even really here. A person of the In Between himself.
I took her photograph out of my pocket. The photo that had been stitched into the lining of the antique Italian volume of Hell and its devils with the reference to the Holocaust Memorial on its back. And now this Jewish scientist had turned up, stuffed into a box, beneath the Weeping Willow memorial created in memory of all those who had gone before. Had the reference to a weeping willow been a clue? A premonition? A warning? Who was it who was playing these games with me? Who tormented me in such a fashion? Sending me the smallest snippets of information with maddeningly cryptic quotations that could not be unravelled until it was too late.
I pulled out the second photograph — the one that had been hidden in the case of wine from France; the one that showed Stephomi and me facing each other across the hotel room, the vast, stunning cityscape of Paris spread out through the window behind us. And the quote from Robert Kennedy on the back: ‘ Forgive your enemies, but do not forget their names. ’… Do not forget their names… The implication was clear — that Zadkiel Stephomi was an enemy and not to be trusted. That he must be kept at arm’s length and closely watched. But whatever Stephomi was to me, he had been more forthcoming and open than this cursed letter-sender, and in those moments I felt a powerful, unreasoning hatred against that person. That unknown person, out there somewhere, deliberately taunting me, pushing me to the edge of madness itself. God, how I hated them!
And, whoever they were, they were now here in Budapest. They had pushed the last note under the door with their own hands rather than sending it disguised in the mail. They knew where I lived. They knew that I could read and understand Latin. I took this note out too and lay it on the table beside the photos and the newspaper article to re-read it:
The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent and easy is the way.
And then, added beneath:
The Ninth Circle will not hide you much longer.
Yes. Someone was surely trying to drive me insane. The Weeping Willow reference on the back of Anna Sovanak’s picture strongly suggested that this was the same person who had deposited the Jewish woman’s body beneath the Holocaust Memorial. Which meant that I did indeed have a most dangerous enemy: a ruthless and twisted killer; a clever lunatic. But I wouldn’t let him beat me. I’d set a trap for him — catch him like the rat he was.
I went into Budapest today and purchased a very expensive, top of the range video camera, so tiny as to be hardly noticeable to the casual glance, which I fixed over my doorway. If anybody puts anything else under my door, I will know about it. I will see, once and for all, who is behind these dreadful games.
I have always been a fervent and devout Christian. I know this because of the worn out, heavily annotated Bible by my bed, but I can also feel my faith burning inside me. I accept God in my soul. I know that the Bible speaks the truth and I need no miracles to persuade me of this. I have always known that angels and demons are real. But I didn’t realise that they were so close to us before.