Imago

ONE WEEK EARLIER

FRIDAY

Prologue

Étretat, France – 11:23pm RST (Rational Standard Time)

The house itself was surprisingly modest. Three stories high, with an old-fashioned gable roof and shuttered windows, it suggested wealth and restrained good taste.

Its location, however, suggested nothing of the kind.

On three sides of the house, the land fell suddenly in chalk cliffs to the sea far below. Nothing but thin strips of grass lay between the house and the sheer drop. On the fourth side, an immaculate, narrow lawn stretched away for a hundred metres, perfectly bisected by a gravel driveway. The house had been built at the end of a perilously thin finger of land thrust out from the cliffs, a craggy, natural pier of chalk. Where the finger connected with the mainland, a security fence neatly cut it off from the outside world.

Beyond the fence and its attendant guardhouse, a private road wound towards the village half a kilometre away, where the cliffs sank down into a wide, golden beach. In the summer it filled with holidaymakers, who squinted up at the house at the end of the cliffs and wondered who could possibly live there.

Someone wealthy, they thought. Someone who appreciated a good view. And on this they were quite correct. But what was less obvious to the casual observer was that the house’s remote and lofty location made it much more than just a highly desirable summer home.

It was a fortress.

And tonight, it was being breached.

Below the house – beyond the end of the finger of land – a massive buttress thrust further into the sea, creating a natural archway. A chalk pillar stood even further out, the rock seeming to glow faintly against the moonless night sky. Below, invisible to anyone on the cliff top, the surf crashed remorselessly against it.

Halfway up the buttress, a grey-clad figure moved equally invisibly, methodically climbing the cliff with two small picks.

The climber reached the top of the buttress, and with difficulty scaled the remaining, sheerer distance to the top of the cliff. Clambering onto the strip of grass at the top, he darted to the back of the house and flattened himself against the wall.

He paused, listening for any sounds above the roar of the surf far below, before carefully edging around the building until he reached the front.

Standing motionless, invisible in the darkness, he could see a light in the window of the guardhouse at the end of the drive, a hundred metres away. After waiting a few minutes, and seeing no visible movement, the man stowed his climbing picks in his backpack, then darted up the short flight of steps leading to the front door, and bent to inspect the lock.

From a pouch on his belt he took two slivers of metal, barely visible in the darkness, and inserted them carefully into the lock. He rotated them minutely, the motions of his fingers as delicate and practised as those of a surgeon, until the tumblers clattered into place. Standing, he pulled on a pair of thin gloves, cautiously opened the door, and slipped inside, shutting it behind him with a quiet click.

The hallway was pitch black. The intruder, now apparently confident that he was alone in the house, took off his backpack and pulled out a small oil lantern, which he lit with a match. The dim light which it produced revealed a large, impeccably furnished room. Potted palms cast spidery shadows which crept across the black and white walls as the intruder moved his lamp in a wide arc, peering at his surroundings.

Directly opposite the front door, a burgundy-carpeted staircase led up into the darkness. The intruder climbed it, his movements quick and careful. It led to another hallway, where he pushed open the first door he came to.

He found himself in a large study, where an untidy desk stood before tall, shuttered windows. On the far side of the room, an elegant set of quilted chairs was grouped around a coffee table, on which two large books of photography had been tossed. The whole room was dominated by mahogany shelves which lined the walls from floor to ceiling, crammed with leather-bound books.

Like the rest of the house, the study spoke of wealth and casual good taste. But it also bore a hint of something else, something both headier and infinitely more ephemeral: the indescribable aura of power.

Closing the door, the intruder placed the lantern carefully on the desk, and began to sift through the papers lying on it. His face, now lit by the soft glow of the lantern, revealed little. The intruder was a thin, wiry man in his forties. Deep lines ran, prematurely, across his high forehead and from his large, narrow nose to the corners of his mouth.

After a couple of minutes, having failed to find what he was looking for, he moved from the desk and began to inspect the shelves that lined the room. Glancing only briefly at the books they housed, he instead ran his fingers along the shelves themselves and their supports.

When he reached a portion just behind the chairs and coffee table, there was a soft click, and a narrow section of shelving swung out slightly. For the first time since he had entered the house, the intruder smiled.

But at that moment, the front door slammed. The intruder started in shock and moved swiftly to the study door and opened it ajar, listening intently. From the hallway below he could make out two voices – two men – speaking.

It seemed that the owner of the house was not going to be absent tonight after all.

Moving with desperate haste, the intruder closed the study door once more, then snatched up the lantern from the desk and scanned the room for a hiding place. Only the secret door in the bookcase offered any refuge. He yanked it open, stepped inside, and pulled the door to behind him as he raised the lantern.

Abruptly, a face leaped at the intruder from the darkness – a terrifying apparition with long hair, a bushy beard, and wild eyes. Most monstrous of all, the man had enormous antlers, spread menacingly like outstretched arms, dominating the room and lunging towards the door. In one hand he wielded a curved blade, which he thrust at the intruder.

Staggering back, the intruder stifled a cry, raising the lantern to defend himself. But the antlered man stayed rooted to the spot, suddenly motionless. It was just a statue, given temporary life and movement by the swinging lantern. Nevertheless, the intruder gaped at the statue in astonishment. For it was one of the most familiar figures in the world: the Horned God, an object of veneration to millions. And what he had, in his panic, mistaken for a blade was nothing more than a symbol of the crescent moon. In the other hand, the figure held a circle, representing the full moon.

Similar statues could be found all over the world. But images of the Horned God were illegal in this country, and had been for centuries. Some existed, certainly – mostly hidden away in the homes of clandestine worshippers, who faced imprisonment if discovered.

Hardly an object you’d expect to find in the home of someone as powerful as the man who lived here.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, the intruder saw that behind the statue the room was little more than an oversized cupboard. But it was crammed with religious images of every kind. Icons and small idols were packed onto narrow shelves, and huddled together on the floor. Gods of every description stared unblinking in the flickering lamp light: willowy women in flowing robes; helmeted warriors, proudly raising ancient weapons; squat, cross-legged characters smiling gnomically; sun gods, moon goddesses, and green men. The stubs of candles were littered among them, dribbles of hard wax staining the floor.

Blowing out the lantern, the intruder was plunged into darkness. Barely a moment later he heard the study door open and light blazed through the crack in the bookcase door as the room’s electric light was turned on. Moving silently forward, the intruder pressed his eye to the crack in the doorway and looked out at the room beyond.

The owner of the house, immaculate in a black evening suit and spats, was holding the study door open for another man. His guest was also dressed in black, but there the resemblance ended. He wore a heavy dark robe, the hem of which swished around his ankles as he strode into the room. Long, elaborately styled ringlets escaped from under his turban around the back and sides of his head. His features were Middle Eastern, and his black beard was tinged with grey.

The intruder recognised his face instantly. He was the leader – in this country – of a dangerous sect, a foreign religion with a bloody past. He was a fanatic, a terrorist, one of the country’s most wanted men. And here was one of the most powerful and influential members of the establishment and his sworn enemy, welcoming him into his study.

The owner of the house motioned his guest into one of the chairs, before sitting down himself and pouring two glasses of wine from a carafe on the coffee table. As the man in the black robe moved to take one, the religious symbol which hung from a chain around his neck swung forward and caught the light, sweeping away the intruder’s last remaining doubts about the man’s identity. There could be no doubting that symbol or what it meant.

The owner of the house took a sip from his own glass, before replacing it on the coffee table and sitting back. Crossing his legs and folding his hands in the attitude that the intruder knew too well – an attitude of control, poise, and slightly amused disdain for whoever he was talking to – he began to speak.

Trapped in the secret room with the statue of the Horned God and the host of icons, the intruder listened to their conversation with mounting fear.

For he knew that what they were planning would change the world forever.

*

Boulogne, France - 11:50pm RST

‘So it’s true,’ said the man in the long, clerical robe.

His two companions nodded grimly.

‘Everything was smashed,’ said the man to his left. ‘The temple wrecked, the holy icons broken.’

‘And Father Florian beaten and left for dead,’ added his other companion, a woman with greying hair tightly curled around her head.

‘The third in less than a fortnight,’ said the man in the vestments. He shook his head, his hand moving unconsciously to touch the brooch on his shoulder that pinned his robe together. It was a simple design in silver: a circle flanked by two crescents, representing the waxing, full, and waning moon.

Their shadows bobbed and flickered on the rough, grey walls and the low ceiling as the cheap candles on the cloth-covered table in front of them sputtered fitfully.

There were no other lights in the small, windowless room. A dozen or so chairs filled the little space. The two men and the woman sat on the front row, facing the table and, beyond it, a large, stylised statue of a bearded man holding an upright cartwheel.

‘Who is it, Father Louis? The police?’ The man’s features were hard to make out in the dim light, his dark eyes lost in the gloom.

The man in the robe shook his head again. ‘I don’t think so. This isn’t how they do things. There’s no message here, no government crackdown, no announcements. It’s as if they’re looking for something.’

The other two exchanged alarmed glances.

‘You don’t think – ’ began the woman.

‘They’re trying to find it? It’s possible,’ Father Louis replied.

‘But they can’t – ’ stammered the other man. ‘If it should be found…’

‘I know.’

‘Can’t the hierarchy do something?’ said the woman.

‘What can they do?’ said Father Louis. The candlelight cast the deep lines on his face into shadow as he glanced around at her. ‘Rome has no power here. Each temple must look out for itself.’

‘Then what are we going to do?’

Father Louis drummed his fingers on his knee for a moment. He seemed to reach a decision.

‘There’s someone who might be able to help. An investigator. With the skills to find out who’s behind this and what they want. Who might know how we can stop them.’

‘Who?’ demanded the other man. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Her,’ corrected the priest mildly. ‘I knew her in – in my past life. I’ll contact her. Anonymously, to start with. If anyone can get to the bottom of this, she can.’

‘And if she can’t?’

Father Louis gazed at the statue at the front of the room, the candles massed in front of it. His eyes moved to the lowering shadow it cast against the wall and ceiling behind. ‘Then even Taranis won’t be able to save us.’

ONE WEEK LATER

SUNDAY

1

London – 5:12am RST

Father Thames was the most welcoming of gods. People had been making offerings to him for thousands of years, and he accepted them all on equal terms. No supplicant was ever turned away.

The corpse was no different.

It had entered the river some way up, around Pimlico, perhaps, or Lambeth was probably more likely. Perhaps it had already been a corpse when it was offered to Father Thames, or maybe it was still a living person at that stage. It made little difference to the river, which treated all human bodies equally, and reduced them to the same condition no matter what state they were in when it received them. No wonder so many people had venerated the winding, grey ribbon as a microcosm of life itself.

The body floated past West Temple, the centuries-old palace on the bank of the river where the government still sat, as it had since time immemorial. The incongruity of the name invariably amused and puzzled tourists, who did not understand the peculiarly English solution to embarrassing anachronisms: make no effort to do anything about them for so long that they become venerable traditions, and then fight tooth and nail to preserve them unchanged for posterity.

As the palace receded on the left, the body bobbed past Southwark on the right – past the art galleries and theatres, and under the great bridge that linked the magnificent railway stations on either side of the river. The iron spans of the bridge still shone, but the brick pillars that bore its weight were already discoloured green and black where the Thames slopped around them. The body navigated its way around the pillars in the awkward but unerring way that such objects always do, before rejoining the main stream in the centre of the river. Small boats steamed past it, swamping it with their wakes, but every time the body disappeared beneath the choppy grey water, it would re-emerge moments later further downstream.

It picked up speed as it passed the Royal Museum on the left, with its mock-classical pillars and great dome. It was still an imposing structure, even though it was now overshadowed by the massive bulk of the towers and ziggurats of the City, oddly ethereal-looking with their white stone and concrete. In the right light, the City looked as though a vast bank of cotton-soft clouds had descended upon London and tried to make an effort by straightening their edges out somewhat. At night, it sparkled with a million gas and electric lights. But on grey mornings like today, the City merely contrived to look greyer still.

The body swirled and span as it passed the Tower of London, where another gleaming new bridge mimicked the castle’s medieval turrets with two taller, spikier, and thoroughly tackier towers of its own. As it passed Surrey Docks on the right, and the northern skyline gave way to a series of enormous brick warehouses, the light river traffic became a chaos of altogether more serious ships, churning the water of the Thames as they steamed upriver to the docks, turning, manoeuvring, reversing, and heading back again towards the sea. The air was blue with the curses of sailors and dockers, and the water was thick with oil and debris, bobbing tirelessly in the choppy waves in which the corpse floated. It was flung into a series of eddies as a black iron barge thundered by, pushing it towards the north bank where, eventually, it washed onto the steps of a small dock at Lymhoste.

And there it ceased to be the concern of Father Thames, and became instead the problem of Julian Harvey.

2

Lymhoste, London – 6:35am RST

Julian Harvey walked briskly through the warren of narrow streets and dreary warehouses that largely constituted Lymhoste, and emerged onto the dock. It was an unremarkable loading area, backed mainly by brick sheds, with a couple of steam cranes and a number of crates and bins. At one end of the dock a small chapel, barely more than a glorified bay window, was attached to one of the sheds. In front of the chapel a flight of steps led down into the river.

The body had been hauled to the top of the steps and inadequately covered with a bit of tarpaulin. A uniformed police constable stood next to it, together with a man in a raincoat that screamed ‘detective’. Standing by them was a tall woman in late middle age. She was wrapped in the white ecclesiastical robe known as a chlamys, pinned at the shoulder with the triple-moon brooch. But Harvey would have known her as the chapel priestess just from the glare she was directing at him. It was the look that people like her always gave him, an unattractive mixture of pity and resentment.

There was nothing in Harvey’s outward appearance to merit such open disdain. In his early thirties, he had a naturally athletic build that lent itself well to the black suit he wore – although there was an indefinably informal air to him that made the official-looking outfit seem more comfortable than businesslike. His large, deep brown eyes were set wide, and bore an expression of perpetual amiability, laughter lines in the corners crinkling his smooth dark skin. But the corners of his mouth seemed to have a downward tendency. It was the face of someone more used to asking questions than finding answers.

‘Good morning,’ said Harvey, with a cheeriness he didn’t feel, as he approached the sad little group. His limbs felt stiff, as they always did when he missed his pre-breakfast workout in the gym. He glanced down at the body and did his best to mimic the unconcerned attitude of the two policemen.

When people learned what Julian Harvey did for a living, they tended to assume that the discovery of mysterious corpses must be a daily occurrence.

In fact it almost never happened. Contrary to popular belief, agents of the Office of Religious Investigation were rarely called upon to inspect dreadful scenes of barbaric human sacrifice, at least not within the greater metropolitan area. Secret subterranean temples with bloodstained altars and arcane inscriptions in the stone that could transform honest men into gibbering maniacs with a single glance were almost entirely outside Harvey’s experience. On the contrary, the groups he investigated were usually about as exciting as a sewing circle, and often seemed to fill much the same social role.

This was fine as far as Harvey was concerned. But he already felt a creeping sense of unease that this case would be anything but mundane.

‘What have we got, then?’ he asked, meeting the eye of the man in the raincoat.

‘It was found just after half past five this morning,’ the detective replied.

Sunrise, thought Harvey. So – ‘Found by this lady, then?’ He turned to the priestess.

‘I came down to the steps for the morning ritual,’ she said, in an oddly challenging tone, ‘and there he was, washed up at the bottom. So I went straight to find a policeman.’

She hadn’t panicked or screamed for help, Harvey noted without surprise. These people were often more sensible, in an everyday sort of way, than one might expect. And in the case of river priests, the fact that they were invariably the first ones down to the water every morning to perform their simple rituals meant that they were quite used to seeing unpleasant objects bobbing about. There were only a few such priests in the city, but they were responsible for a disproportionate number of reports of bodies in the water or other things of interest to the authorities.

‘I was patrolling on Northey Street,’ said the constable mechanically, as if he were making a report in court. It was an attitude that Harvey was used to from policemen dealing with ORI agents. ‘I was alerted by this lady and came to the dock to find the gentleman lying on the steps as she had described. After assessing the situation I called the station and explained to the detective chief inspector.’

‘I see,’ said Harvey. He turned back to the priestess. ‘Was anyone with you when you found him?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s a solitary ritual. No-one usually comes to the chapel until late morning.’

‘So there’s no-one who can corroborate your movements this morning?’

‘You don’t believe me.’ The priestess narrowed her eyes.

‘It’s not a question of what I believe – ’ began Harvey.

‘Yes, it is.’ She cut him off before he could finish, her voice rising in anger. ‘That’s exactly what it’s a question of. I’m telling you the plain facts of what happened, and it’s up to you whether you believe them or not. You’re choosing not to. That’s what you call rationalism,’ she finished accusingly.

‘Look,’ said Harvey with well practised calmness, ‘there’s going to be an investigation into what happened to this man. So we need to establish the facts, and that means checking people’s statements. Rationalism is just about being careful about what’s probably true and what isn’t. Isn’t that reasonable?’

‘Rationalism is about giving up on trust and faith, and reducing the world to what can be proven,’ returned the priestess. ‘Rationalists don’t want to admit that there’s more to the world than logic can prove. The rationalist makes one thing his standard of truth – himself, and whatever he himself can prove to be true, or rather, what he wants to be true.’

Behind the priestess, Harvey saw the detective roll his eyes. It was an action that came naturally to them. The face they were set in was long and thin, with an unhealthy pallor, but the wrinkles around the eyes and the edges of the mouth suggested that its owner did not take life entirely seriously.

‘This is a discussion I’d be happy to have with you another time,’ said Harvey, who had endured the exact same discussion on innumerable occasions, ‘but not right now. I will, as you put it, choose to believe you about the circumstances under which you found the body, for the time being.’

‘Good,’ said the detective quickly, before the priestess could add anything further. His voice was nasal and laconic, with a strong north London twang. ‘After that, I contacted your lot and then came down here. And here I’ve been ever since, waiting for you to arrive.’

Opening his case, he took out a pair of thin rubber gloves, which he handed to Harvey. ‘We thought you should take a look at this before we did anything else.’

3

Lymhoste, London – 6:42am RST

Harvey pulled on the gloves, snapping them against his wrists, then crouched down and carefully drew back the tarpaulin. The body beneath had belonged to a man of indeterminate age, probably late twenties or early thirties, Harvey guessed. It was, by some miracle, still clothed, at least partially – it was wearing an unusual pair of long, loosely fitting underpants. The body was battered and filthy from its passage through the river but seemed to be intact.

He peered more closely at the face. Long black hair was plastered across it, and the features had swollen and become distorted, but they looked like the man might have been Middle Eastern. He had a short, trimmed, black beard.

‘And why did you call the ORI, exactly, Chief Inspector…?’ asked Harvey, straightening again.

‘Overton,’ replied the detective. He reached down and, pulling a wooden stick from his pocket, used it to lift aside some of the corpse’s hair that obscured the neck. Below, still attached to a leather thong, was a pendant of some kind.

Harvey leaned closer to look. The pendant was a single piece of metal, cast into a distinctive form.

The cross shape itself was not unusual. But the four arms were not of equal length. The bottom arm, pointing downward from the thong, was twice as long as the others, giving the cross a shape roughly like that of a cut flower. Each arm ended in a stylised floral decoration, rather like a fleur-de-lis. The pendant caught the grey light as Overton used his stick to angle it for Harvey to see more clearly.

He didn’t need to see any more clearly. He knew exactly what the symbol was and what it meant.

It meant a name from which, Julian Harvey knew with sinking certainty, no good could possibly come.

It meant Christian.

4

Varne Bank, English Channel – 7:12am RST

Freyja Barrett stood up, and immediately regretted it. Just as she got to her feet, the boat suddenly lurched, slid over the crest of a wave, then dropped sickeningly into a trough. With an audible thump, Freyja slumped down again onto the bench that ran around the stern of the boat.

She sighed impatiently as she peered into the surrounding fog, wrapping her long coat around her angular frame to ward against the chill. No other vessels could be seen, not even the gigantic steam ships that continually thundered their way between Britain and the continent.

‘How much further, Howard?’ she yelled to the hunched figure in the tiny space that passed for a wheel house, as the boat continued to pitch back and forth across the waves. His hunch exaggerated itself for a moment into what Freyja suspected was a shrug, but Howard Millen held the wheel steady and continued to gaze forwards.

The choppiness of the sea, Freyja knew, was the result of them passing over the shallowest part of the Varne Bank, where the sandy sea bed was little more than a metre or two beneath the waves. Even in this visibility, it was unmistakeable – especially for a sailor as experienced as Howard.

She thought again of the mysterious letter she had received, urging her to come to France to discuss a job for a temple there. The author hadn’t said what the job would be. He hadn’t even given his name, only the arrangements to meet once she arrived in the country.

Freyja was a woman of many talents. For the right price, she could be a private investigator, a bounty hunter, a mercenary, or a thief. But really, as long as there was excitement to be had, the right price wasn’t all that important.

As the boat continued to rise and fall, a distant, irregular ringing began to drift across the water.

‘That’s the warning buoy! We’re almost there!’ called Freyja excitedly, half-standing again to peer ahead through the fog. The Varne Bank did not have quite the reputation of the notorious Goodwin Sands, a few kilometres along the coast, but it was still a serious hazard to the unwary. As if to emphasise the point, the boat passed a splintered mast jutting haphazardly from the water. Freyja ignored it, as she ignored most things from the past, brushing back strands of her dark, straight hair, as she continued to squint into the fog ahead.

The mast had barely receded into the fog behind them when a much larger object suddenly loomed from the murk on their starboard side. With a furious oath, Howard spun the wheel and the boat slewed around to face it. For a terrifying moment, it felt to Freyja like the boat had come to a halt and the object was bearing inexorably down upon them. But then the boat’s pace suddenly dropped and they came to rest side-by-side with a loud bang.

It was a round structure, several metres across and built of dark bricks, rising directly out of the sea to a height of three or four metres. A slender mast rose higher still from its side, with a blinking electric light at the top. If it hadn’t been for the fog, they would have been able to see it for half the trip there.

A corroded, but sound, metal ladder was attached to the side of the structure, together with some mooring rings, to which Howard quickly fastened the boat. As he did so, Freyja grabbed her tall backpack and swung it heavily over her shoulders, before seizing the ladder and heaving herself onto the lowest rung.

‘Be careful, Freyja,’ said Howard, as he did every time they made the trip.

‘I’m