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THIRTY-NINE

Sunday, 3.56pm, Manhattan

‘Why did you run away? I just want to talk.’

‘Talk? You just want to talk? So why were you bloody stalking me? Christ!’ Will was bending over, one hand on his knee, the other tending to his chin.

‘I didn’t want to approach you while you were with, um, that woman. Upstairs. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know if it was safe.’

‘Well, it would have been safer for me, believe me. Jesus Christ.’

Will found a chair and all but fell into it, trying to catch his breath. ‘So what the hell’s this about, Sandy? Or is it Shimon?’

‘Shimon Shmuel. But call me Sandy, it’ll be easier.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you, I really did not. But I couldn’t let you run away. I have to talk to you. Something very bad has happened.’

‘You’re telling me. My wife has been kidnapped; I’ve practically been tortured; your rabbi killed some guy in Bangkok; and now you’ve spent a weekend stalking me, before the grand finale of a whack on the chin.’

‘I haven’t spent a weekend stalking you.’

‘Save it, Sandy, really. I saw you from the window last night: the baseball cap nearly threw me, but I got it in the end.’

‘I promise you, I came to find you today. Not last night. I was in Crown Heights last night.’

‘Well, someone was waiting for me outside the Times building yesterday evening. They followed me to my friend’s house and waited there too. And so far the only person I know who does that kind of thing is you.’

‘I swear that wasn’t me, Will. It wasn’t. I had no need to come then.’

‘What do you mean, no need?’

‘It hadn’t happened last night. Or at least we didn’t know about it till this morning.’

‘What hadn’t happened?’

‘It’s Yosef Yitzhok.’ The voice faltered enough to make Will look, for the first time, at Sandy’s face. He still had not removed his hood – a substitute skullcap, it was doing the religious duty of covering his head – but even in the shadow it cast, Will could see. Sandy’s eyes were red raw. He looked like he had been weeping for hours.

‘What’s happened to him?’

‘He’s dead, Will. He was murdered, brutally murdered.’

‘Oh my God. Where?’

‘No one knows. They found him dead in an alleyway near the shul. It was early this morning, probably on his way to shacharis. Sorry, morning prayers. His tallis, his prayer shawl, was red with blood.’

‘I don’t believe this. Who would do such a thing?’

‘I don’t know. None of us know. That’s why Sara Leah – you met her, my wife – said I should find you. She thought this was somehow connected with you.’

‘With me? She blames me?’

‘No! Who said blame? She just thinks this might be connected to whatever happened on Friday night.’

‘You told her about all that?’

‘Only what I knew. But Yosef Yitzhok’s wife is her sister. We’re family, Will. He’s my brother-in-law. Was my brother-in-law.’ The redness of his eyes was about to deepen again.

‘And Yosef Yitzhok said something to his wife?’

‘Not much, I don’t think. Just that he had spoken to you on Friday night. He said you were caught up in something very important. No, that wasn’t the word. He said you were caught up in something catastrophic. That was the word he used, catastrophic.’

‘Did he say anything else to his wife?’

‘Just that he hoped and prayed that you understood what was happening. And that you would know what to do.’

At that moment, Will could not have felt more helpless. The rabbi had said it first and now Yosef Yitzhok was repeating it, from the grave. An ancient story is unfolding, that’s what the rabbi had said. Something mankind has feared for millennia. Now YY was telling him the stakes were so high that he was praying that Will would know what to do. And yet, Will felt as confused as ever. If anything, more confused – his head swirling with the bizarre coincidence of Macrae, Baxter and Samak, three noble men all dying horrible deaths; the blustering rhetoric of the Book of Proverbs and, most recently, the impenetrable, mystical geometry of the diagram he and TC had found in this very library.

‘Shit! TC! She’s still upstairs. Come with me. Hurry!’

Will was scolding himself at every step, as he bounded up stairs and along corridors, Sandy behind him, returning to the reading room. How could he have left her alone?

Will marched towards the desk he and TC had shared nearly an hour earlier. As he got nearer, his heart sank. A woman was sitting there – but it was not TC. She had gone.

Will punched the desk with his fist, sending a bolt of pain through his arm – and a look of terror across the woman’s face. How can I have been such a fool! These kidnappers had now taken two women from under his nose. He was meant to have protected them both and he had failed them. Both.

Sandy was standing by him, but Will could not see him or hear him. Only one thing stirred him out of his torpor: the steady, persistent vibration he now felt on his thigh. It was his phone.

2 new messages

He pressed the first one.

Where are you? Had to leave. Call me. TC.

Will sighed out a chestful of air. Thank God up above for that. He opened the next message, sure it would be TC, suggesting the place they should meet up. What he saw made him take two steps back in amazement.

Fiftieth and Fifth.

Yosef Yitzhok might have been dead – but the riddles lived on.