Secrets of the Dead Read Free

He checked the slide and the magazine. He ejected the cartridge in the chamber and reloaded.
    Abby pulled herself off the ground The wet dress clung to her body, dragging her down. She had to escape – but where? To the car? She didn’t know where Michael had left the keys. She didn’t even have time to get back to the house. The intruder was walking along the side of the pool, gun raised. She hurled herself into the colonnade as the next shot went off. Stone cracked; something shattered.
    She crouched low and ran down the back of the colonnade, ducking between the columns and the statue plinths. It was like being in a shooting gallery – except the man wasn’t shooting. Had he run out of bullets?
    She reached the end of the colonnade and paused. A marble Jupiter towered over her, a lightning bolt clenched in his fist. Measured footsteps approached.
    With a sickening shock, she realised why he hadn’t bothered shooting. She was trapped in a corner with nowhere to go. She cowered behind the base of the statue. The footsteps stopped.
    The silence was worst of all.
    ‘What do you want?’ she called.
    No answer. Water dripped off her sodden dress and pooled around her feet. What was he waiting for?
    She had thought she knew what it was like to face death. She’d heard the stories a thousand times and recorded them diligently. But the people who’d lived to bear witness had been survivors. Some had run when the killers came; others lay rigid in the killing fields and played dead, sometimes for hours, while their families and neighbours died around them. They never gave up.
    She had one chance. She pushed off on the plinth, jack-knifed up and spun around, throwing her entire weight against the statue. It wobbled, tottered and fell. The god crashed down and smashed into pieces. The gunman leapt back, losing his balance.
    Abby was already running. She crossed the last few yards of the terrace and dived back inside the house. On the wall, the giant TV screen played its rote images of war and revenge, oblivious to the real horror in front of it.
    Where now?
    But the gunman had recovered too fast. The first bullet shattered the window behind her. The second tore into her shoulder, spinning her around. She saw him stepping through the broken window, gun raised.
    ‘ Please ,’ she begged. She wanted to run, but her body had failed her. ‘Why are you doing this?’
    The man shrugged. He had a black moustache and a mole on his right cheek, sprouting hairs. His eyes were dark and hard.
    Her last thought was of a witness she’d interviewed years ago, a grey-haired Hutu woman grinding meal in a jungle camp somewhere between Congo and Rwanda. ‘You never gave up,’ Abby had told her in admiration, and the woman had shaken her head.
    ‘I was lucky. The others were not. That was the only difference.’
    The man raised the gun and fired.

II
    Roman Province of Moesia – August 337
    IT’S STILL AUGUST, but autumn has already arrived. Like every old man, I fear this season. Shadows fall, nights lengthen and the knives come out. On evenings like these, when the chill in the air makes my old wounds squirm, I retire to the bathhouse and order my slaves to stoke the fire. The pool’s empty, but I sit on the rim and tip water over the scalding stones. The steam goes up my nose and softens my flesh. Perhaps that will make it easier for my murderers, when they come.
    I’m ready to die – it holds no terrors for me. I’ve lived longer than I deserved. I’ve been a soldier, a courtier and a politician: none of them professions noted for their longevity. When my murderers come – and they are coming – I know they won’t linger. They’re busy men these days. I’m not the last person they have to kill. They won’t torture me: they don’t know the questions to ask.
    They’ve no idea what I could tell them.
    A shiver goes down my back. I haven’t undressed – I’m not going to die naked – and my clothes are sodden. I throw