The Lazarus Prophecy Read Online Free Page B

and courtesans among her gender had possessed any influence or credibility. She was reminded that some criminologists put the number of the Ripper’s victims into double figures. She supposed it was possible. It was a bleak area of speculation.
    Her mobile rang and the familiar sound of it made her jump. It was the theologian, Jacob Prior, returning her call. That was good. She closed the computer page she’d been looking at andstarted to explain to him how his expertise might help them better profile their killer. He listened without comment or interruption until she’d finished. And then in a voice more youthful than she’d expected to hear he said he’d seen her morning press conference on the midday news and would do whatever he could to help with their investigation.
    He thought it resembled less a place of piety than a fortress. The location might be partially responsible for that. The monolithic character of the structure might be a consequence of the weather it was forced to endure. Pyrenean winters could be harsh at this altitude. Ice eroded stonework. Wind withered masonry. They had built it to last and last it had, he thought, as he rapped painfully with his knuckles on the iron-braced wood of the door.
    He looked up, appraisingly. The façade was high and almost featureless. It was flat-roofed, with crenellations like those that surmounted a medieval keep. It was coloured a stained dark grey and windows no wider really than chinks had been hewn into the stone at high intervals. He shivered. He was not cold after the exertion of climbing the hazardous path to the spot. The building he stood before seemed to cast not just a shadow but a surrounding chill. It squatted there. There was a sense in which he thought it silently brooded too.
    Bolts were drawn back with what sounded like ponderous slowness and he looked frowning at his wristwatch. Already, he was impatient to be away from this refuge of heresy and obsolescence, this blemish on the character of a faith properly equipped to flourish in the contemporary world. Before even having met them, Father Cantrell was offended by the human relics he was obliged to confront and the offensive nonsense their order had peddled down the centuries. He would put a stop to it. It was his mission and if he was indignant, he thought his indignation entirely of the righteous sort.
    The man who opened the door was very elderly. He blinked at the light and vastness against which Cantrell knew he must be framed in the doorway. He was tall and thin and stooped from what looked like the affliction of arthritis. It had bent his back and deformed his hands, twisting the fingers of both in on his palms in a mannerism that made him seem obsequious or afraid. He wore a coarse brown woolen habit and a silver crucifix that looked antique hung from a frayed leather cord around his scrawny neck.
    â€˜I am Brother Dominic,’ he said. ‘You will be Father James, sent by the Cardinal. Come in, Father. I will not pretend that you are welcome.’ The words were delivered with a blast of the halitosis common to serial fasters. The chemicals of the stomach, deprived of food, revolted.
    Cantrell felt relieved at the rudeness he’d just encountered. He despised cant and hypocrisy. His presence here was a threat not just to the way that the residents of this place lived and worshipped but to their very existence. It would be perverse for them to pretend to be pleased by his arrival. He’d deliver the news they needed to hear and his departure afterwards would not be delayed by unnecessary courtesies.
    There was no brightness within, because there was no power. There were candles on high stands, he saw as his eyes adjusted to the absence of illumination, but they were not lit. Gloom pervaded. What scant light there was entered through glassless windows in the stone fabric of the building as deep and narrow as archery slits. The flagged floor of the large chamber