Chapter Eight #2
and put pressure on her, possibly threaten her, but Diana thought she knew Anya better. She was confident that she could handle
this herself. If this time pressure could be removed, she’d have the whole thing in hand already.
She yawned, staving off exhaustion. Sometimes, the Larks’ mission felt like a house of cards that she had sole responsibility
for.
She reminded herself again that the Kats had clearly come to the same conclusion about the path to finding The Book of Wonder.
If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to find the embroidery, and Eleanor Bruton wouldn’t have holed up on a remote Scottish island with it.
The Larks just needed to stay at least one step ahead of them, to reach the prize first.
Her phone vibrated. A notification from Magnus. She read his message—Anya’s on board. She was hugely relieved but also unsettled that he had got to Anya before she did. She had too many plates spinning, she
knew, but she supposed Shakespeare was right when he wrote that all’s well that ends well, and this was good news, if Magnus
was right. He tended to be a bull in a china shop when it came to negotiations, but with Anya he could pull emotional levers
like no one else, and he was undoubtedly manipulative enough to do so.
So, Anya was a problem solved for now at least, which was excellent. It reminded her that it was important to hold her nerve
and not assume that she needed to be the one to put out every fire. Sometimes, she caught a break. Sometimes, just when she
thought the center wasn’t going to hold, things went her way.
The car stopped. “This is it,” the driver said.
They were in a wasteland, in north Greenwich, a site on the edge of the River Thames almost opposite London City Airport.
Diana had seen photographs, but she hadn’t appreciated what an amazing location this was until now. It would be the perfect
place for the Fellowship to construct its flagship building for the Lark Foundation. An appropriate setting for them to bring
their mission out into the open, with the means and structure to make meaningful improvements to women’s lives.
Charlotte and Bridget were already out of their car and had walked ahead. Bridget’s assistant stayed in the car, working on
a laptop. She glanced at Diana but didn’t smile. Charlotte and Bridget stood at the edge of the site, with their backs to
the water. Charlotte was pointing to something. Their shoulders were almost touching, and Diana wondered how deep the connection
between them went. Charlotte was so good at fostering these relationships. Behind them, the river coursed toward the Thames
Barrier.
As Diana approached, Charlotte and Bridget moved on, but she was content to stay behind and let them talk. Bridget was Charlotte’s contact, and she would want to lead this. There was a reason she had chosen to travel with Bridget, not with Diana, and it was wise to be sensitive to her wishes.
Diana followed at a distance as they walked the perimeter of the site. Seagulls squabbled over something on the pebbly shore.
It would be dark soon.
A black cab pulled up beside the two sleek town cars. Diana watched as a woman got out. She carried a large messenger bag.
Diana waved to her, and she waved back. It must be the architect.
She looked to see where Bridget and Charlotte had got to. They were quite far ahead now and had reached a corner of the site
that bordered a set of unused railway arches, old structures built from red brick, probably Victorian.
Diana waited for the architect to join her. It would be nice to get a moment alone with her to hear about her vision for their
building. As she approached, Diana saw she was surprisingly tall. Her blond hair was cut into a shaggy bob. She wore black
boots, tailored black trousers, and a coat whose silhouette seemed sculpted. Her glasses had thick black frames. Diana smiled.
This was exactly the uniform she’d expect a young architect to wear, but so long as this woman could design a building worthy
of the Foundation, it didn’t matter if her clothing was a cliché.
They shook hands and introduced themselves.
The architect’s name was Naomi Lee and her palms were clammy, suggesting nerves lay beneath her poise. She must want this
very badly, Diana thought, which was a good thing, and not surprising. A project on this scale was a huge opportunity for
her and she could be a very good fit for the Larks’ ethos. Launching the career of a young female architect was just the sort
of work the Larks were dedicated to.
They set off to join Charlotte and Bridget, who were standing outside the railway arches.
The space beneath each arch was closed off with a pair of large wooden doors.
They’d been neglected. Chipped paint and rotten planks, their edges nibbled by decay.
Diana wondered if the architect would want to preserve some of these features or raze it all.
“What else have you worked on?” she asked the architect.
“Until recently I’ve been working with a practice in the UAE. Some very exciting things happening out there.”
“There’s a lot of money washing around, I suppose.”
“Yes, and a hunger for buildings that innovate.”
She would probably raze the arches, then. But Diana didn’t have a problem with that. Sometimes you needed to destroy to create.
Ahead, Bridget wrenched open one of the big doors. Charlotte followed her inside.
“Now I’m trying to start my own practice in London,” the architect said. “I’ve done a couple of private homes, but I want
to work on bigger projects. Something like this would be the dream.”
I’ll bet it would, Diana thought. The architect would have to earn her place on this, but Diana liked her confidence already. It was women
like her who would inherit the benefits of what Diana was working for and build on that. Amazing how a short conversation
and a bit of good news from Magnus could kindle hope and inject energy into a crappy day.
They arrived at the arches. Diana gestured for the architect to enter the space first. The door swung shut behind them.
Charlotte and Bridget were standing beneath a lightbulb that hung from the tall arched ceiling. The bulb cast a desultory
glow, illuminating the exposed brick on the underside of the arch. Water dripped from it. In a corner two pigeons huddled
on a ledge near a hole in the wall that opened to daylight. The acoustics were strange, distorting and amplifying their cooing
and scratching, magnifying the sound of dripping water.
Introductions over, the architect said, “So, there’s a viewpoint on the top of the arches that we can access from here. You can see the whole site from there. It might be a good place to explain some of my preliminary concepts.”
“Great,” Bridget said.
“Great,” the architect echoed back. Everyone was smiling. “It’s a bit of a dodgy climb, so watch your step. Maybe best to
use phone lights. I promise it’s worth it!”
Bridget led and Charlotte followed.
The architect said, “We probably shouldn’t have more than two people on the stairs at once. I don’t know how much weight they’ll
bear.”
Diana waited as Charlotte and Bridget climbed. The stairs were made from metal that was rusted in places. It wasn’t clear
how firmly they were attached to the wall. Light from Charlotte’s and Bridget’s phones bounced off the surfaces, then they
disappeared through the door at the top of the stairs. Their voices suddenly sounded quite far away.
“After you,” the architect said.
Diana stepped toward the staircase and directed the light from her phone onto the first few treads.
She didn’t immediately sense danger when she felt the barrel of a gun nestle in the pocket at the base of her skull. The sensation
was cold and strangely simple. She hadn’t processed what it was or what it meant before the architect pulled the trigger a
millisecond later.
The sound of the shot was a dull thud, the silencer doing its work.
Diana’s body fell backward. The architect stepped neatly out of its way, and it landed hard on the damp floor. A halo of blood
emerged from the wound in Diana’s head as the architect watched. It was viscous and berry red.
Bridget made her way carefully back down the stairs and knelt to inspect the body to make sure Diana was dead. She took care
to avoid the blood.
Charlotte stood at the top, watching, shock on her face, the color draining from it, before she descended.
“For God’s sake, Bridget,” she said. “Did it have to be so quick?”
“She was a liability. We agreed she had to go.”
“We only just agreed it!”
“You know the policy. We eradicate problems as soon as we identify them. Do you have a problem with that?”
“She did good work, and she was a friend.” There was a snag in Charlotte’s voice.
“A friend carrying on an affair with Judge Henry Macdonald after we got what we wanted from him. A friend whose affair with
him compromised us because she was too blind to see that his wife was one of them. A friend who made a fucking mess of disposing
of the Chinese girl’s body, because it just washed up. And, yes, the DNA is a match. I don’t enjoy firefighting. Larks do
their jobs properly or they go.”
“I know why we’ve done this,” Charlotte snapped. “It doesn’t mean I’m happy about how and when. We could have afforded her a little more
dignity than this. And how do I explain it? It’s going to bring a world of unwanted attention to the Institute when we could
really do without it.”
Bridget stepped around the body and walked toward the sliver of natural light slicing through the doorway. At the door she
turned back and said, “Get Anya Brown in front of that embroidery and those books.”
Charlotte was still staring at the body. “Well, here’s the thing,” she said. “I gave the embroidery to Diana.” She picked
up Diana’s bag and rifled through it. Then her pockets. “It’s not here,” she said.
“Then check her bloody hotel room.”