and that was something that he could not bear to contemplate.
Acting on impulse, he pushed up the lower part of the sash window and called down.
‘Where are you going, Sasha?’
Sasha jumped at the sudden noise breaking the stillness of the morning and put her hand on the crown of her head, as if to prevent her hat from falling off. It was the old preoccupation: Her elaborately structured brown hair and high collars were there to hide the livid red burn that disfigured her neck and shoulders. But the burn was too high, and she could never fully conceal it. Men were drawn to her brown eyes and full lips and the clear soft complexion of her face, but the contrast with the ravaged flesh below only increased their repulsion when they got closer to her. All except Silas, who seemed to follow her all the time. With his eyes. In person. Recently he’d seemed almost omnipresent. It was as if he was attracted by her disfigurement. She dreaded that one day he might ask her about it.
‘I’m going into Oxford. I need to do some things,’ she said, filling her voice with all the discouragement that she could muster.
But Silas was undeterred. Sasha’s upturned face and his position in the window above her gave him a sense of power.
‘Let me give you a lift. I can have the car out in a moment.’
It was his father’s car. The Rolls-Royce was the first concrete proof of his inheritance. He wanted Sasha inside it, the sense of her body resting against the soft grey leather of the seat beside him, so that he could take his hand off the steering wheel and caress that place at the nape of her neck where her perfect skin met its burnt counterpart.
Silas turned away from the window without waiting for Sasha to protest any further and ran down the stairs. Five minutes later he had his wish, and they were passing through the sleepy village of Moreton. In the valley below, the city of Oxford was spread out before them: rivers and parks and old stone buildings surrounded by high walls. The sun glinted on the silver and gold domes of the city’s churches, and Silas pressed his foot down on the accelerator and allowed the car to gather speed as it went down the hill and up again, past the scene of his mother’s death.
‘That policeman was here today,’ he said, making conversation.
‘Which policeman?’
‘Trave. The one in charge of the case.’
‘What did he want?’
‘I don’t know. Just poking around, asking stupid questions.’
‘About what?’
‘What I felt about my father. Things like that.’
‘What did you feel about him?’
‘I don’t know. He was selfish – I mean really selfish. But you know that. It was like he didn’t feel anything. And yet he was clever. He knew a lot, more than I’ll ever know.’
‘You admired him?’
‘In a way. He was my father.’
‘I know that.’ It sounded like an accusation.
They lapsed into an uneasy silence and Silas found it almost painful not to reach out and touch Sasha, who sat with her head turned away, willing herself towards her destination.
‘Have you seen the Ritters today?’ Silas asked, not because he was interested, but in order to get some reaction out of his companion.
‘Him, but not her. He said she was sick again.’
‘He probably hit her. Didn’t you hear the shouting two nights ago?’
‘Yes, he’s disgusting. Like an animal.’ Sasha spoke with sudden passion, and at the same time, two bright red patches appeared in the centre of her normally pale cheeks.
‘I’ll ask him to leave if you like.’ The idea had often crossed Silas’s mind since his father’s death, but he had never quite had the courage to go through with it.
‘That’s up to you. It’s your house. Perhaps you don’t want me there any more either.’
‘No, I do. Really I do.’
Silas cursed himself for raising the possibility of Sasha’s departure, and he turned round towards her to add emphasis to his words, taking his eye off the road as he did so.
‘Look out,’ Sasha shouted, and Silas was only just in time to slam his foot down on the brake and bring the car to a shuddering halt, inches away from an old woman crossing the road in front of them. His arm shot out across Sasha to prevent her being thrown forward, and he felt her breast against his hand for a moment, before she pushed him away.
‘You’re an idiot, Silas,’ she said angrily. ‘You could have killed that old woman, and us too.’
Silas said nothing. Instead he bent down to help Sasha, who was busy picking up the papers and books that had fallen out of her bag onto the floor. There was one yellowed document that caught his attention. It was covered with a spidery handwriting that Silas didn’t recognize. He noticed the date 1936 in the top corner and a name, John of Rome. It seemed to be a translation of some kind, but Silas had no chance to read any more before Sasha snatched the paper out of his hand.
‘Its part of our work on the catalogue,’ she said, even though Silas had not asked for any explanation. ‘Your father would have wanted me to finish it.’
They drove on into Oxford in silence, passing Silas’s little photographic shop and studio on the Cowley Road. He had spent hardly any time there since the murder, and he made a mental note to give the landlord notice at the end of the month. His inheritance at least meant that he wouldn’t need to earn his living as a humble portrait photographer any longer.
Sasha got out of the car almost without warning at a traffic light in Holywell and hurried away down a side street, clutching her shoulder bag tight to her side. Silas pulled over, half onto the pavement, and left the car unlocked as he ran after her. But she was already out of sight by the time he got to the first corner, and after a minute or two he gave up looking for her and went home.
CHAPTER 5
Sasha stepped out from behind the back gate of New College and looked around. Silas was nowhere in sight. She’d known instinctively that he’d try to follow her, although she still couldn’t understand his apparent infatuation. It repelled her, and she wished she could leave the manor house and never see its new owner again. Perhaps she should. In truth she was close to giving up on finding the codex. In the last five months, she’d turned the leaves of every manuscript that John Cade owned, but nothing had fallen out. She’d stared into every recess, tapped every wall, and found nothing – only the diary secreted in the hollow base of the study bookcase that she’d discovered two days ago.
Sasha held the book close to her as she hurried through a network of narrow cobbled lanes, turning left and right, apparently at random. She remembered her excitement when she first found it. The study had been dark apart from her torch, and for a moment she felt as if Cade was there, watching her from the armchair where he used to sit, slowly rotating his thick tongue around his thin lips as he turned vellum pages one by one. Sasha had never been a superstitious person, but still she’d
