Chapter Seventeen
Clio
Clio was alone in the room when she woke up. There was no sign of Sid or Anya, and she was grateful, because her cheeks were
wet with tears that she didn’t want them to see. She wiped them away roughly.
She hadn’t got to sleep until four in the morning because she’d been trying to work out what to do, wondering how deep this
went in the force, and if Lillian had left her so abruptly on the steps of the British Museum because she was trying to get
away quickly. Had she known that they’d been seen?
Clio’s brain had worked on the problem while she slept and the answers made her feel a little dead inside, as well as desperately
sad.
Lillian had to have known that her death was imminent, and she’d tried to force it into taking place in such a way as to make
Clio suspicious of murder. Why else would she have chosen one of the most surveilled places in London to meet Clio? Even though
the exterior cameras had been disabled somehow, whoever murdered Lillian hadn’t got to the ones inside the museum. Lillian
had likely gambled on it being impossible to put every camera out of action, and hoped Clio would figure it out.
She’d sacrificed herself to expose evil.
And I did figure it out, Clio thought. She threw back the covers and got out of bed. She’d slept in her clothes. In the bathroom,
she splashed water on her face, scrubbed away her tears, and looked hard at herself in the mirror as she swallowed her feelings.
Not now.
She heard a soft knock on the door of the room and the sound of it opening cautiously. “It’s me,” Sid called.
She let herself out of the bathroom. He was alone. “Where’s Anya?”
She’d eventually decided she wouldn’t report Anya’s mother missing yet. If these organizations had enough of a grip on the
police force to get both Lillian and her friend killed, then their reach was very deep. Triggering an investigation into her
whereabouts would almost certainly put Rose Brown in more danger.
Sid said, “Anya’s gone. She left a note.” He handed it to Clio. He looked cut up.
She read it: “‘Wait at the hotel. I’ll be back later. Don’t worry.’” She glanced at Sid and his gaze slid away. The man was
a bad liar. “Where did you find it?” she asked.
He hesitated. Another tell. “Downstairs.”
“At the desk?”
He nodded.
“I thought it wasn’t manned until seven.”
He shrugged.
Clio’s phone pinged with a new message from Izzy. Clearly, she never slept.
Just took another look at that CCTV grab. Isn’t the younger woman Tim Keenan’s new wife?
Clio was shocked all over again. How deep did the influence of these women reach? She messaged back: Is it?? I’ve never met her.
Tim kept his private life private around her, but she’d heard on the grapevine that he’d married someone much younger, and once overheard him complaining about starting another family at his age.
It was his second round, and it had deepened the bags under his eyes.
Serves him right, she thought now. Probably the mother of his first children thought the same.
I’m sure I’ve seen her in a photo Axford showed me on his phone, Izzy wrote. They all socialize together.
Can you try to confirm and let me know?
Yeah. Are you still sick?
Clio hated lying. She stared at the phone, then typed, I owe you one.
Sid was in the bathroom. Clio sat on the side of the bed, testing out an idea, a way to bring Tim and Tony down, a way to
keep herself safe. It was a good idea, the kind that shoots a bolt of energy through you. Lillian would approve. Lillian had
been ten steps ahead of her all the way, and she probably still was.
When Sid came out of the bathroom, Clio said, “You need to tell me where Anya’s gone. I know you know.”
Anya
I held my breath, waiting to hear someone entering the hypogeum behind me but there was only the sound of gurgling water.
Perhaps fear was playing tricks with my imagination.
I looked up. The inside of the half-domed ceiling was decorated with rows of multiple short tubes, stacked vertically, each
painted a different color, cream, yellow, blue, and red. It was weirdly modern, deeply strange, and as I’d thought when I’d
found the images of the ceiling online, by far the closest thing I’d ever seen to the strange pipes illustrated in the Voynich.
I was transfixed.
In the opposite chamber, the ceiling was painted blue and covered in stars, another strong Voynich echo.
Painted scenes from the Old and New Testaments covered the walls, bold and frightening.
Their crude style told me they were very old.
I felt awed, as if I’d walked into an Egyptian tomb or a cave of prehistoric paintings.
When I returned to the first chamber to stand beneath the strange tubular forms again, I felt as if I’d walked into a page of the Voynich.
But I saw nothing to tell me where The Book of Wonder might be, or even hint at it. I searched all three spaces carefully, sending torchlight into every corner, closely examining
every painting, desperate for a clue—a sign, a symbol, anything—to tell me what next. Since I’d come this far, I felt like
the solution should be staring me in the face, but the art was so simple, the spaces so empty otherwise, and I couldn’t find
any reference to a hidden book or to the Nogarolas or anything else relevant. I felt hopeless.
The sound of the water must have masked the footsteps. By the time I heard them again, they were close. Someone was coming
and I only had moments to decide what to do. I switched off my flashlight and the space turned black.
There was no other way out apart from a tunnel that had been chained off. It wasn’t open to the public. I knew from the plans
I’d seen that it led deeper underground, to the spring, almost certainly to a dead end, but I thought I could hide there at
least. It was my only chance.
As quietly as I could, I felt along the walls until I found the tunnel’s opening and ducked beneath the chain to enter. I
felt my way along it, my palms on the rough walls to guide me. It was narrow and the floor was uneven and jagged in places.
As the tunnel descended, the water level rose and soaked through my shoes. Within minutes, I was wading through a couple of
inches of freezing, fast flowing spring water and I was afraid of how deep it might get.
When I glanced behind me I could see light raking the tunnel walls.
A man’s voice called my name, and it echoed menacingly.
My heart raced harder. I pushed on even as the water rose to my knees, moving ever slower and struggling to keep my balance until I couldn’t any longer.
I tripped and cried out as I fell, smashing my shoulder against the rock wall.
Another shout came from behind me, sharper and more urgent than before. Light fell on me momentarily. My fingers grasped for
purchase on the slippery rock wall; I pulled myself up and pushed forward harder until I reached a bend in the tunnel where
the flooring seemed to drop off a shelf and had no choice but to carry on. I stepped into icy water that came up to waist
level, making me gasp, and within moments I was shivering. I didn’t know if I could go much farther. I cinched my backpack
straps as tightly as possible to raise it up my back. The bestiary and glossary were in there. I couldn’t let them get wet.
Behind me I heard splashing. Someone was getting closer.
Hands trembling, I managed to dry them enough to turn on my phone light.
The light picked out the shape of a metal bar set into the wall a few feet away. There were more above it. It was a rudimentary
ladder, set into the side of the tunnel. It looked like hope. I had no way of telling how deep the water beneath it was but
I waded toward it, praying I wouldn’t step off another ledge.
My hands slipped off the rungs when I tried to pull myself up. I tried again. This time my foot found a rung beneath the surface
of the water, giving me some leverage. I looked up and could see the dimmest crescent of light above. I climbed as fast as
I could. I was in a well, I realized. It narrowed as I climbed. To reach the top I had to wriggle my backpack off and carry
it with one hand. I barely fit in the narrowing space. I was afraid of getting stuck and the muscles in my arms and legs screamed
with effort.
At the top, planks covered the circular opening.
Bracing my back against the side of the well, I pushed at them, but they didn’t move.
I propped the backpack on a rung in front of me, holding it in place with my abdomen, and used every last bit of strength I had to slam the palms of my hands into the planks.
Pain shot down my arms, but I did it again, and again, until one of them shifted.
As it did, light filled the shaft of the well from below, spotlighting and almost blinding me. A man was directly beneath
me, shouting in Italian. I heard my name again. I tried to climb up, through the narrow gap I’d made, but now I was stuck,
wedged against my pack. I wriggled desperately until I’d freed it, but holding on to it was awkward. For a second, I was tempted
to drop it, to save myself, but with what felt like the last of my strength, I managed to shove it up through the gap.
But the man was climbing up toward me, fast, and he’d almost reached me. I got my head through the gap, then my shoulders.
My arms shook with the effort. I thought my strength would fail me. He was right below me now, reaching up, and he grabbed
at my foot. I screamed, kicking him away, and made a final effort to pull myself out just as he tried again. The plank splintered
my flank and my thigh savagely but I made it.
I looked back down into the well. He was staring up at me. I saw the whites of his eyes, the glow of his flashlight, but he
was stuck. The well was too narrow at the top for him. He shouted at me again. I hefted the plank back over the top of the
well, leaving him in darkness, and looked around.