(1992) Prophecy Read online

  The soldiers stood back, covering their ears now, unable to bear the sound that threatened to shatter the insides of their own heads. Even the sergeant released his grip and covered his ears.

  Long after the poker had cooled and the nobleman lay motionless in his own slime and vomit, his fingernails embedded into the palms of his hands, the scream remained, echoing back at them as if it would never fade.

  CHAPTER ONE

  26th March, 1988

  The father and son walked along the London pavement in the warmth of the spring mid-morning sunshine. The father ambled at a leisurely stride; a tall man in his late thirties, in an unbuttoned Harris Tweed coat, whose thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, as if he was pondering the cosmos above him rather than concentrating on his immediate environs.

  He had a strong, open face, with handsome features and an amiable, if rather absent-minded, expression. His brown hair was parted high and was a little long, covering the tips of his ears and the top of his collar. His bearing was distinctly aristocratic, but in spite of his City suit he looked more like an academic than someone who fitted into a business community.

  The five-year-old boy had his mother’s looks: short ginger curls, a serious, freckled face, wide, innocent green eyes. He was wearing a tiny corduroy jacket, grey flannel shorts, grey knee-length socks and polished black shoes. He wished his father would walk faster; this part of London did not interest him – except for the Dungeon and the Tower, and the Docklands train, and they had already done those. The thought of the shop in Regent Street filled him with an excitement he could barely contain, and the prospect of the tube train they were going to take to it was something he looked forward to also, but now that they had left the boring office where he had had to wait for an hour with nothing much to read, his father seemed in no hurry and he panicked for a moment.

  ‘Daddy, we are going to Hamleys, aren’t we? You promised.’

  ‘Hamleys?’ The father stared at his son as if he had momentarily forgotten him.

  ‘You promised!’

  ‘Righty ho, suppose we’d better head there, then.’

  The boy looked at his father, never sure when he was joking and when he was serious. ‘Is this the right way?’

  ‘We’ve got to wait for Mummy.’

  The boy’s face fell. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘At the hairdresser’s. She’s coming to my office at half past twelve. That’s in twenty minutes.’

  ‘That’s not for ages! Where are we going now?’

  ‘I have to pick up Mummy’s wedding bracelet from the mender.’

  The boy’s face fell further. ‘You said we were going to Hamleys.’

  ‘We’re going to have lunch with Mummy, then we’re going to Hamleys.’

  ‘I want to go now! You promised!’ The boy was sobbing.

  They were blocking a busy pavement, being jostled by passers-by. There was an alley-way beside them, with a café a short distance down on the right. The father pulled his fractious son past an employment bureau, a travel agent, a heel bar and a few other shops, then stopped outside a dingy, unprepossessing sandwich bar with words above it, in twelve-inch-high dayglo letters, two of which were missing: SANDW CH S LUIGI CAFE. Four small suction cups held a white plastic menu against the inside of the window. EAT IN OR TAKE AWAY was printed along the bottom.

  ‘Look, they have milkshakes,’ the father said. ‘Let’s have one.’

  A small queue stood at the counter and all but one of the tiny handful of tables were taken. There was a strong smell of coffee and of frying food; a dying fly fizzed and crackled in the mesh of an ultraviolet trap. Two posters, discoloured with age, one of Amalfi and one of Naples, were stuck to the back wall.

  His father propelled his charge to the empty table and sat him down. The boy placed his fists on the table. ‘You promised! You promised – you –’ The boy was silent suddenly and a strange look came into his eyes, a mixture of both fear and recognition as he stared past his father at the counter.

  His father turned his head, surprised, failing to see what he was looking at. Behind the counter a thin, unshaven man in his fifties greeted a customer with a cheery: ‘Hi, how y’doin? What y’gonna ’ave today?’ Next to him, a short, plump woman with lifeless black hair and a haggard, drained face, was buttering bread. There was a sharp ping and a girl in a white apron removed a dish from the microwave.

  ‘Chocolate milkshake?’ the father suggested, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping the tears from his son’s face. He went to the counter and bought a milkshake and an espresso.

  The boy concentrated on his drink, his tantrum forgotten. Soon he was spooning the dregs from the bottom of the glass, and then he became absorbed in scooping up the last of the froth with a straw.

  When they left the café and were walking back down the alley into the street, he asked, ‘Are we meeting Mummy, now?’

  ‘Yes, for lunch. Then we’re going to Hamleys, and then the Planetarium. You want to see the stars, don’t you?’

  The boy nodded dubiously.

  In the distance, they both heard a siren; it sounded like a bag of stones being swirled through the air.

  ‘Daddy, why does Mummy always go to the hairdresser every time we come to London?’

  ‘Because she likes to look nice,’ he was told.

  They walked on for a moment in silence. The shops here contained nothing to distract the boy. Stationery. Men’s clothes. Masonic regalia. A bank. A silversmith.

  The swishing of the siren was coming closer and the boy heard the roar of an engine. They stopped, waiting for the lights to change to cross the road. A cyclist pedalled across, wearing a crash-helmet, his face covered in a smog mask which the boy thought made him look frightening. Then he saw a woman with short red hair on the other side of the road, and for a moment he thought it was his mother and tugged excitedly on his father’s hand, wanting to pull him across the road to greet her. Until he realized she was a stranger. His mother had long hair.

  The siren was still coming closer. The boy looked up at his father and tugged his sleeve. ‘Daddy, do you think I should have my hair done in London?’

  The father tousled his son’s curls fondly. ‘Like to come to Trumper’s with me next time I go?’

  The boy nodded, waited until his father was looking away, slid a hand up and flattened his hair down again. Then he looked across the road at the woman with red hair. She looked like his mother again now. It was his mother! It was. His heart leapt, then her hair blew in a gust, and it wasn’t; it was someone quite different.

  The lights changed to green, and the boy ran forward. Something jerked him back, holding his collar, a sharp yank. There was the roar of an engine, a shadow bearing down, the siren deafening now. The red-haired woman was halfway out in the road. His mother? Not his mother? She was staring at him, her mouth open. She was trying to run backwards now.

  Tyres screamed. A shadow crossed, blocked his view for an instant. A van with two young men in it braking furiously, slewing across the road. Going to hit the woman.

  ‘Mummy!’ he screamed.

  The woman was splayed out on the van’s bonnet. It was careering across the road, mounting the pavement. A man in a business suit dived out of its path. A traffic-light post snapped and the coloured lights shattered on to the road. Then came an explosion like a bomb as the van, with the woman still on the bonnet, smashed through the plate-glass window of a bookshop.

  The woman seemed to elongate then disappear. For an instant the entire surroundings seemed paralysed. In the silence there was nothing but the sound of breaking glass. The boy saw a chunk of window fall. He heard a scream, followed by another. Doors slamming. A siren winding down. Policemen leaping out of a car. Doors of the van opening: one easily, one with difficulty, the man inside forcing it. The van’s engine was still running.

  ‘Mummy!’

  The boy broke free of his father’s grip and ran in terror across the road, through the crowd that was forming, pushing
his way, sidestepping the opening door of the van. Another pane of glass crashed down. Blood. Books scattered everywhere. A poster lay on the ground, covered in blood. An assistant was standing in the shop, hand over her mouth, screaming. The boy stared in the direction she was looking. His mouth opened but no sound came out. The woman’s body lay on the floor, blood jetting intermittently from her neck. Red bubbles lay on the grey carpet tiles. A rubber mask with hair attached lay nearby, leaking blood into a fallen dumpbin of paperbacks.

  Then he realized it wasn’t a rubber mask. It was his mother’s head.

  CHAPTER TWO

  August 1991

  Summer had finally come to London a week ago after two months of almost continuous rain, and already the grass in the parks was parched. Seven days of heat seemed to have drawn every last drop of moisture from the soil – from the pavements, from the cement in the eternal building works – and dust that was loose and weightless hung like a permanent haze in the air. Frannie Monsanto had breathed it in, washed it out of her hair at night. She felt it now, clinging like pollen to her skin, which was already sticky with perspiration.

  Normally Frannie’s Mediterranean genes reacted automatically to sunshine, flooding her with a deep sense of well-being. But at work today she had been glad of the coolness of the basement vault of the Museum, and she was thankful to be heading away from the claustrophobic oven of the city and en route to catch a train up to the Yorkshire countryside.

  The rush-hour tube was crowded and she felt faintly ridiculous holding the double bass, her overnight suitcase wedged between her legs. Air blasted her face through the open windows: hot, rank draughts that smelled of soot and something more unpleasant, reminiscent of unwashed feet, as the carriage rocked and screamed through a long stretch of darkness.

  Frannie was twenty-five, with attractive Latin looks and a slender figure that she kept well toned by twice-weekly aerobics, and by swimming fifty lengths on Sunday mornings at her local pool. Like many Latins, her family had a tendency towards fatness in middle age, and Frannie was determined never to let that happen to her, the way she was determined about many things in life.

  Capriciousness sometimes broke through her barrier of reserve and, on rarer occasions, a fiery temper; but mostly Frannie applied herself with single-minded quietness and dedication to her work. She did not consider herself academic, or intellectual, and had to compensate by sheer slog. That was how she had got into university in the first place, and how she had got her degree in Archaeology and Anthropology. Frannie would have been pleased just to have scraped a third and had surprised herself by getting an upper second. She had scarcely been able to believe her good fortune when she had been offered a post as a research assistant at the British Museum within weeks of leaving university, where she had remained since.

  She had wispy chestnut-brown hair that was clipped to each side of her head and rested on her shoulders, a straight nose, intelligent olive eyes and an expressive, sensual mouth prone to smiling, although at heart she was a serious girl. At five feet four inches, she wished she was a little taller, but by and large she was happy about her appearance.

  She was wearing Nike trainers, blue jeans, an orange T-shirt and a black cotton jacket. Slung over her arm was a large untreated leather handbag she had bought in Naples four years previously on a family visit, and which was now comfortably hammered from its daily use. Frannie was not particularly interested in clothes and loathed shopping for them. In any event, archaeology did not pay well and she was saving as hard as she could to buy a small flat of her own and get out of the crummy place she rented. Jeans were fine for her work and she lived in them most of the time, except when she had a smart date.

  She had had no such date for a while. It had been over six months since her relationship with her last boyfriend had ended and, to her surprise, she was really enjoying her freedom. She was reading a lot, catching up on movies, going to exhibitions.

  It would not last, she knew. Something intrinsically excited her about men, and sex was something she enjoyed deeply.

  ‘Dreaming of nothing in particular?’ said an advertisement on a panel in front of her.

  A lanky youth with goofy front teeth stood opposite her. He looked at her face, down at the double bass, then back at her again. She caught his eye, stared back, and he looked away hastily. The train swayed and she nearly lost her balance, bumped into a large man in a singlet, with tattoos on his arms, and the double bass rocked precariously. She was already regretting having so readily agreed to bring it.

  It belonged to Meredith Minns, a fellow Archaeology student at the University of London, with whom she had shared a room for their last year there. Meredith had wavered all that year between becoming a professional archaeologist or musician, then had fallen in love with a farmer and was now living in North Yorkshire, had produced two children, one of whom Frannie was a godmother to, and seemed content being a farmer’s wife.

  When she had invited Frannie up to stay, she had asked if she would mind collecting the instrument from a man who was repairing it in Covent Garden. Meredith had told her to take a taxi and she would pay, but Frannie did not like squandering money, neither her own nor anyone else’s, and she had decided when she collected it that although it was bulky it was not heavy, and she could manage it on the tube. Now she was beginning to realize she had been a bit optimistic.

  The train was slowing and she gripped the grab-handle harder, lurching towards the goofy-toothed youth. Bright lights slid past the window as they came into a station. She saw the sign KING’S CROSS, and the train halted. She lugged her case and the double bass out, along the platform and on to the escalator.

  On the station concourse, long lines stretched back from the ticket offices and the platform gates. Commuters hurried, some trying impossibly to sprint through the crowds.

  People clambered over suitcases; a toothless old lady halted her luggage trolley, lips chomping impatiently, waiting for Frannie to move out of her path. But Frannie had not noticed her; she was standing, trying to fathom out the departures board. YORK, she saw, 17.34. PLATFORM 3. She looked around for a luggage trolley but could not see one, and hefted her double bass and suitcase over to a queue at the ticket offices. An announcement rang out. Beads of perspiration trickled down her neck. She bought her ticket, then queued again at the platform gate. The train was coming in now, and the Tannoy announced: ‘Arrival of the 14.52 from York. British Rail apologizes for the late arrival of this train.’

  She saw carriage doors opening in line before the train had stopped moving, and the empty platform erupted in seconds into a surging wall of people. Frannie heard a shout and a small boy ran past the ticket inspector and headlong into the mêlée, followed by a harassed-looking man. Frannie gripped her ticket in her teeth, picked up her case and slid the double bass forward, stopped, repeated the procedure until she had reached the gate, then handed the ticket to the inspector.

  He clipped it without looking at it, distracted by a colleague, and handed it back. She struggled forwards, the double bass getting heavier by the moment, got a few yards down the platform then stopped for a rest. Somewhere in front of her she heard a child shouting.

  ‘No! I don’t want to! I don’t want to!’

  The sound rang out above the clattering of feet. Several people glanced around.

  ‘I hate you!’

  The crowd was thinning and she could now see a boy of about eight – the boy who had run through the barrier a few minutes before – fighting to free himself from the grip of the man who had been chasing him and who was pulling him down the platform towards the gate.

  ‘Let me go, let me –’ As they reached Frannie, the boy suddenly stopped shouting and stared at her intently. Frannie felt a strange sense of recognition, as if she had seen him before somewhere. The man looked familiar also. In his mid-thirties, she estimated. Tall, a handsome, distinctive face; brown hair parted high up; he reminded her a little of the movie actor Harrison Ford and she wonde
red fleetingly where she had seen him before; perhaps he was an actor, or maybe a politician.

  He stopped, sensing the boy’s change of mood and interest, and smiled apologetically at Frannie; he seemed a little embarrassed by the child’s behaviour. The boy was looking curiously at her double bass.

  ‘Can I – er – give you a hand?’ the man said in a quiet, assertive voice that carried both a hint of humour and the plummy confidence of the English upper classes. He was wearing an old-fashioned but rather stylish linen suit, a faded denim shirt and a pink-and-green tie, and he had an endearing air that made Frannie instantly attracted to him.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘Thanks – I can –’

  ‘It’s – er – no problem. Which carriage do you want? Have you got a reservation?’

  ‘Any carriage – I didn’t reserve.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To York.’

  ‘Oh right – we’ll – umm – take you down to the front – it’ll be easier for you the other end.’ He picked up the double bass and the suitcase.

  ‘Really, it’s –’

  ‘What’s in there?’ the boy asked, touching the case. He was serious-looking, with an open, freckled face and curly ginger hair.

  ‘It’s a double bass,’ she said as she walked behind the man, the boy walking beside her.

  ‘Why’s it in the box?’

  ‘Because it’s easier to carry.’ She smiled, feeling a curious affinity for him.