Brotherhood of the Tomb by Daniel Easterman Read Free Book Online

distant rumbling as the storm passed on into the Wicklow Hills. Aching to his bones, he picked himself up and clambered back over the wall onto the road.
    The car was still where he had left it, against the wall. Its engine had stalled. He had supposed someone would have heard the crash and come out to investigate or phoned for the Gardai, but the road was deserted. If any sleepers had been awakened, they must have imagined the crash a clap of thunder and gone back to sleep. He pulled the door open and slipped into the driver’s seat.
    He knew he should rush back to the house for a hot shower and a change of clothes, but first he had to search the car. His mind was in turmoil. He had seen the symbol on the watcher’s wrist twice before. Once on the pendant round Francesca’s neck, the pendant she had thrown angrily into the sea, almost as a portent of tonight’s events.
    The second time had been several years ago, during a mission in Egypt. To see it again here in Ireland filled him with the deepest foreboding. He had thought that episode buried forever: he should have known that sands shift and the buried past returns to life.
    He switched on the interior lights and looked round. The car was a small Citroen hatchback, tidy and quite new-looking, probably rented. There was nothing on the rear seat or the shelf behind it.
    Leaning across the passenger seat, he opened the glove compartment.
    Inside, he found a map and a small book bound in black leather. The book was a copy of the New Testament in Greek with an interlinear English translation based on the Revised Version. Its pages were well thumbed, and here and there in the margins someone had made textual notes in pencil. He put the volume down and turned to the map. It was a standard Geographia map of Dublin, from Ballymun and Santry in the north to Tallaght and Glenageary in the south.
    His own street, situated in the extreme bottom right-hand corner, had been ringed several times in red ink. There was a second set of rings round a spot in the Liberties, centred on Francis Street, about St Malachy’s parish church.
    He felt his heart go cold. The connection between the two circles was unambiguous.
    Taking the map and book, he got out into the rain. It was only a drizzle now, the storm’s rich anger spent or gone elsewhere. He only paused to check the boot, finding it empty as he had expected, then set off home.
    Ruth was waiting up for him. She was crouched over the table in the kitchen, cradling a mug of tea, more for the comfort of it than from a need to drink. He sat down facing her, wordless, shivering, afraid of her gentleness more than anything.
    ‘The storm woke me,’ she said. ‘You were gone again. I thought you might be in the study. I looked everywhere for you.’
    She did not ask where he had been, merely told her story and fell silent. In the half-light her shaded face seemed perhaps lovelier than a woman’s face had ever appeared to him. For that moment, in that
    place. He wanted to sit with her, hold her, talk with her. He thought he loved her after all: it was, at least, what he wanted. To love her, to be here with her. But there was no time tonight. The circles round St Malachy’s, like the circle on the stranger’s wrist, could mean only one thing: a man was in terrible danger. Patrick had no choice.
    ‘I have to go out again,’ he said.
    She looked at him intently, understanding beginning to dawn.
    What’s going on, Patrick? Whatever it is, it doesn’t concern you. You’re finished with that stuff.’
    ‘Come upstairs,’ he said, ‘I have to change.’
    She followed him, clutching her dressing-gown about her as though it could ward off the sudden terrors of the night. The world pressed against her, heavy and cold, its saturated breath dank in her nostrils.
    He made straight for the bedroom and picked up the telephone from the table by the bed. Ruth stood in the doorway, watching. It was bitterly cold.
    The phone in St Malachy’s