Brotherhood of the Tomb by Daniel Easterman Page A

been getting into the spirit of things.
    Next door was a bathroom. Stainless steel and dingy porcelain, a toilet like the one upstairs, a razor on a shelf. He closed the door.
    There were six people in the next room, five men and one woman, Natalya Pavlovna. They sat facing him in a row, their eyes fixed on the door. No one spoke. No one asked him to come in. He stood in the doorway for a long time, returning their stare. Such strange postures, such tortured expressions. No one moved a muscle. Patrick closed the door behind him.
    Whoever had tied them had done a good job: not too tight, not too loose. Just right. Once they were firmly fastened in their chairs, of course the rest had been easy. They had probably bought the plastic bags and rubber bands in Quinnsworth’s. They could not have cost them more than a pound.
    Behind the plastic, the faces were chalk white. Natalya Pavlovna’s alabaster neck was creased and swollen. A small patch of cerulean blue had appeared on her left cheek. Chekulayev’s tongue protruded like a rubber cork, black and ugly.
    The heads had been shaven. Hair lay discarded on the floor, an innocent reminder of old barber shops. Patrick stepped up close. On each scalp three figures had been inscribed in ballpen: 666.
    He looked up. On the wall behind, the same pen had been used to write a single line in Greek:
    Patrick recognized it. The words came from the Book of Revelations:
    Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?
    He glanced at the shaven heads and remembered another verse from the same chapter:
    Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and
    six.
    ‘666’: the number of the Beast. He prayed nobody he knew was behind all this.
    ELEVEN
    They were walking through St Stephen’s Green, a little like lovers, a little like strangers. Everywhere, sculpted faces watched them pass: Mangan and Markievicz, Emmet and Tone and Kettle - poets and freedom fighters turned to civic amenities. There was a little sunlight: not enough to send the clouds packing, but sufficient to lift people’s spirits an inch or two. Buskers had played for them at the top of Grafton Street, A Raibh Tu ag an gCarraig, the pipes muted, the tin whistle sweet and swollen with its painful melancholy. They had taken lunch at the Shelbourne, then crossed the road directly into the park.
    Everything seemed normal here: children played or fed the ducks on the tiny lake, lovers embraced on benches, old men in shabby coats lingered by the bandstand, as though waiting for it to fill again with music. It was not yet spring, but the air held a promise of change. On Grafton Street, old Lord Mustard danced to jazz tunes in a silly hat.
    Sometimes she held his hand, at others she folded her arms and walked ahead of him, as though impatient to be somewhere. She was wearing a long fur coat from Zwirn with Pancaldi shoes, and for the first time he thought she looked out of place. She wore them as a means of distancing herself from the squalor of her occupation, from the everyday demeaning acts she performed in the name of reason. He thought of her clothes more as symbols or guarantees of loyalty: Ruth Ehlers could not be bought. Not, at least, for money.
    ‘I want you to leave, Patrick,’ she said. Beside
    them, a fountain of green and bronze bulrushes threw water high into the February sky. ‘I mean it: don’t get involved in this thing any further.’
    It was the first time she had referred to the subject all day. Oddly enough, it seemed to bring her closer, as though she felt easier dealing with an impersonal matter.
    ‘I am involved. I was involved from the beginning.’
    ‘But that’s as far as it goes. Let somebody else handle it now. You gave this all up, remember?’
    ‘I’ve been recommissioned, Ruth. You don’t just walk away from a friend’s body.’
    They were standing beside the white marble relief of Roisin