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TWENTY-FOUR

Saturday, 11.37am, Manhattan

2 down: Moses to Bond

Now that TC had broken the code, this message was not baffling – he knew it would be solved within a few moments – but it was frightening. This string of nonsense might be about to tell him anything. What if one of those words translated as Beth?

TC grabbed the phone and began punching numbers, only to stop suddenly. ‘2 could be A or B or C. But the only alternative for “down” is “down”. It must be a different system.’

‘It’s a crossword clue.’

‘What?’

‘2 Down. You know, 4 Across, 3 Down. It’s a crossword clue.’

‘All right. So what’s MOSES TO BOND? It implies some sort of motion: we’re meant to take Moses to Bond somehow. But what the hell is Bond anyway?’

‘James Bond? Could be a number. You know, 007.’ TC looked blank. ‘Maybe it’s two down from seven. Which would be five.’

‘Which could be the five books of Moses. But that’s not much of a clue. Listen, I’m cold.’ They were still standing on the street. ‘There.’ She pointed at a McDonalds.

With a bacon breakfast bun in one hand and a pencil in the other, TC was scribbling – combinations of letters and numbers.

‘What about Bond Street?’ said Will, pacing around her. ‘Take Moses to Bond Street?’

TC looked up at Will, her eyebrows raised.

‘OK, OK.’

‘Let’s think this through,’ she said, scoring a long line through everything she had written down. ‘What did you say in your reply to him?’ Will, his mouth now full, froze just as his hands were about to claw a clump of fries. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I meant to. I was about to. But then we heard the news from Bangkok and everything got forgotten.’

Will was almost waiting for TC to pick him up on that lapse into what she used to call the cowardly passive. ‘Everything got forgotten,’ was the cowardly way of saying that Will himself had forgotten. (TC coined the term in honour of an old flatmate who, despairing at the state of the kitchen they shared, but too meek to accuse TC directly, announced, ‘Dishes have been left.’ Hence, and thereafter, the cowardly passive.)

That thought brought back a memory Will had not dredged up for years: the alternative grammar he and TC had devised to reflect the way language was really used, the way emotions really worked. There was, of course, the passive aggressive and, Will’s favourite, the past too-perfect, deployed by those consumed with nostalgia. The pressure caused by gift-giving, particularly pronounced at Christmas, was, inevitably, present tension. We must have been so obnoxious, thought Will now, re-constructing in his mind the world of smart-aleck, private jokes that he and TC had once inhabited together.

‘Well, that makes this even more intriguing,’ TC said, letting Will off despite his error. ‘It’s not a reply. It’s a second message, sent voluntarily. It suggests Yosef Yitzhok felt a degree of urgency: two messages in one morning.’

‘The first one could have been last night. But, OK. Why would this be urgent?

‘I don’t know.’ TC’s voice had dropped; she was distracted. She had grabbed Will’s phone back and was staring at it, taking occasional slurps from her chocolate shake without once breaking her gaze. She broke from the meditation only to murmur, ‘He was in a hurry.’ She began tapping the keypad, then scribbling, then tapping again. A small smile of satisfaction, followed by a crinkled brow.

There. She shoved the sheet of paper across the table.

TWO DOWN. MORE’S TO COME.

They both stared in silence, the pleasure derived from the act of decoding now giving way to the pain of further bemusement.

‘He’s playing games with us,’ said Will. ‘“Right, you’ve deciphered two of my messages; I’ll send more”. So long as we do . . . what?’

‘We need to let him know we understand, but we need more information. We don’t want to piss him off. If he’s trying to help, we need to keep him happy. Send a message back.’

Will took the phone, glancing up at TC with eyes that said, ‘I hope you’re right about this.’

Thank you. I won’t stop. And I want to hear more. Can you tell me anything? Please.

All they could do now was wait. TC was convinced that McDonalds made a sufficiently anonymous hiding place. Will suspected there was another motive: TC did not want Will in her home.

But they had to wait somewhere. If the Hassidim were not going to reply till sundown, or when the three stars appeared, or whatever way these jokers had of telling the time, there was nothing else to do – save waiting for Yosef Yitzhok to give them another tantalizing, veiled message.

It came nearly an hour later, at first sight as nonsensical as the others.

Wet nose debugs room

This time Will pressed the buttons, jotting the results instantly onto his pad. By the time he got to the third word he felt his stomach churn. TC was craning to look and once she saw the notepad, she gasped.

Yet more deaths soon