The Key - Simon Toyne

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tech guys have finished with it. Thought you might want it back.’

      He dropped one of the bags on the bed. The plastic crinkled in her hands as she loosened the string around its neck. Inside was her battered holdall, the only piece of luggage she’d brought with her on the journey here. ‘Thanks,’ she said, closing it up again. She would wait until she was alone before going through it. She didn’t want the priest’s eyes roaming all over her private stuff. Then it occurred to her that he’d probably already seen it outside in the corridor, before it was allowed into the room. The thought made her feel trapped and helpless. She looked up at Arkadian. ‘There’s a cop outside in the corridor,’ she said.

      Arkadian nodded.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Keep an eye on you and the others. Keep the press out.’

      Liv smiled. ‘I am the press.’

      Arkadian smiled. ‘Then I guess he’s not doing a very good job. Fortunately for everyone concerned, you can’t remember anything.’

      ‘Yeah, lucky me.’

      ‘You’ve been through a lot. These things take time.’

      Liv glanced at the priest again, weighing up what he might know against what she might want to keep from him.

      ‘What exactly have I been through?’ Arkadian looked puzzled. ‘Seriously. My memory is so patchy I can’t work out what’s real and what’s not. It would really help if you could talk me through it.’

      ‘What do you want to know?’

      ‘Everything.’

      Arkadian placed the second evidence bag down on the bed, took her hand and started to talk. He started with her brother’s appearance on top of the Citadel, moved carefully through his death and what they found during the autopsy, and finished with the events at the airport where Oscar had died smothering a grenade meant for all of them, Arkadian had been shot and Liv had been knocked unconscious only to reappear a few hours later being carried out of the Citadel by Gabriel. When he had finished, Liv looked across at the priest. He didn’t look back. Arkadian’s carefully told history, delivered in the precise and methodical manner of a seasoned police detective, had blown the mist from almost every recess of her mind. She could now recall everything, all except the one thing she wanted to remember most – what had happened to her inside the Citadel.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said, squeezing Arkadian’s hand.

      ‘My pleasure.’ He let go and reached into his pocket. ‘They’ll be letting you out of here soon.’ He handed her a card. ‘When they do, I want you to give me a call. Least I can do is drive you to the airport.’ He looked down at his bandaged arm. ‘Or get someone else to drive us both.’ He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, reminding her of the way her father used to say goodnight when she was younger and the world was a safer place.

      ‘You look after yourself,’ he said, getting up and heading for the door.

      ‘What’s in the other bag?’

      ‘Something for Mrs Mann,’ he said. ‘She’s just down the hall.’

      ‘Say “Hi” from me,’ Liv said.

      ‘I will.’

      ‘And say “Hi” to Gabriel too – when you see him.’

      ‘Oh, you can tell him yourself. They can’t hold him for ever, and I’m not pressing any charges, even though he stuck an anaesthetic in me. I feel pretty sure he’ll be out before you know it.’

      12

       Police Headquarters, Central District, Ruin

      Gabriel Mann was shoved head first through a fire door by the same stocky guard who had cuffed his hands behind his back a few minutes earlier. He was in the cell block beneath the main Ruin police building, a maze of low ceilings, uneven walls, and cramped corridors, cut hundreds of years previously from the bedrock of the city. Strip lighting flickered green against grey-painted walls, giving the impression that he was in the guts of a building that wasn’t feeling too well.

      Gabriel wasn’t feeling his best either.

      He had just left a meeting with his legal counsel who had outlined the charges against him. They had found three dead bodies in a hangar at the airport – a location the police could definitively place him at; two had been shot with a nine-millimetre pistol – his hands had tested positive for gunshot residue that matched spent cartridges found at the scene; he had been caught on camera at the city morgue at the same time as a body had been stolen; and he had assaulted a police inspector with a hypodermic needle loaded with Ketamine. It was this last charge that had undoubtedly ensured his charmless treatment at the hands of the silent sub-inspector. Most of the others would ultimately go away, but it would take time – and that was something he did not have.

      He had replayed what he had witnessed in the Citadel over and over in his head, trying to make sense of it. He had no idea why he had been allowed to walk free, carrying the girl out with him, but he knew it was only a temporary escape. Whatever had happened to Liv at the top of the mountain before he had found her, whether she had discovered the Sacrament or not, was immaterial. The Sanctus monks sworn to protect the mountain’s great secret would regroup and take steps to silence her. Liv was in mortal danger, so was his mother, and so was he, and he couldn’t protect anyone while he was locked up in here. Escape was the only option – he just had no idea how he was going to do it.

      He’d been checking the building as he’d marched through it, looking for possible means of escape. Every door they’d passed had opened into other cells; some had prisoners inside, most were empty. The interview room had been up a flight of stairs, which meant the cell block was in some kind of sub-basement. The only way in or out was through the automatic gate he’d passed through on his way down.

      Gabriel began to slow as he approached his cell but another shove sent him stumbling straight past. He recovered his balance and kept on walking, his mind racing with the implications. He had been kept in solitary so far, which had suited him fine. A new cell could mean new cellmates. Not good.

      They continued walking deeper into the maze. Paint bubbled on the walls where salts had seeped through the rock and nobody had bothered to fix it. There were fewer cells here and the ones they passed were all empty. It smelled mustier too. Unused. They reached the end of the corridor and another sharp shove sent Gabriel barrelling through a set of fire doors into a short tunnel chopped cleanly in half by a wall of bars. On the other side was a cell containing a steel toilet with no seat, a narrow bench built into the wall and a man so large he made everything around him seem as if it belonged in a child’s nursery.

      ‘Hands through the bars,’ the sub-inspector ordered.

      The giant took one huge step forward, covering the entire width of the cell, and passed wrists as thick as sprinter’s legs through the bars. His eyes never left Gabriel’s face.

      Gabriel was grabbed from behind and slammed sideways into the wall. ‘Make a move and I’ll stick you with the taser, understand?’ The guard’s breath smelled of coffee and cigarettes.

      Gabriel nodded and felt the pressure ease as the guard turned his attention to the giant. It had surprised him when the stocky weightlifter of a sub-inspector had come alone to take him to his cell. Now he knew why: one cop meant less witnesses.

      He glanced up at the smoke detector and closed-circuit camera bolted to the underside of the ducting that ran the length of the corridor, one of the old kind that produced a fuzzy black-and-white picture but no sound. The feed would be routed to the control room he’d passed on his way through the entrance gate. Another cop was probably watching now, ready to send in backup if anything went down. Except the camera wasn’t pointing at the cell. So no one could see what was happening inside it; and once the sub-inspector had locked the door and walked away, no one would care.

      His

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