“Mr Chen must have suspected a robbery and used the replica as a decoy. A sensible move.” Nightshade inclined her head. “How long will it be before someone who saw us open the crate tells Richard what we found inside?”
“Francesca,” Maria said under her breath.
“We need to find the casket and put it right with the Volinari first,” Emma said. “Then we’ll deal with Dad.” She glanced at them both, not knowing if her father would see sense once they explained, but either way, he had to hear it from them.
“Six hours,” Nightshade repeated. “And we need your help with the investigation.”
Maria’s eyes narrowed. “What can I do?”
Nightshade paced the room. “Emma and I will continue with our current line of enquiry. Meanwhile, we need every scrap of information you can find on the statue. Where did it come from? If it’s not the same one you saw in the apartment, when do you think it was swapped? How? Someone skilled must have made it. You could track them down, given enough resources.”
Maria gave a curt nod.
“And perhaps you could visit Jacob,” Nightshade added. “He may have more information that only you can extract.”
Emma shot her a look. Nightshade was wasting Maria’s time with that one. They both knew Jacob was out of it. Emma turned back to her mother. “Mac and Neil, too. The police arrested them because they saw us at the scene of a crime. Can you do something?”
Maria hesitated, stared at her for a beat, and then nodded again. “I’ll contact my lawyer.” She sighed. “And I will send some people to track down Ruby.”
“Ruby. Yes.” Nightshade stopped pacing and faced Maria. “Emma and I will hunt the killer, you’ll search for the Droeshout casket, and together we’ll solve this mystery. What say you?”
Maria kept her gaze on Emma. “Grab a sandwich and a drink before you leave. You look pale.”
Ten minutes later, Emma, Nightshade and Olivia strode into Greenwich Park and followed one of the concrete paths.
Emma wanted ten minutes’ quiet time, away from the city, to try and clear her cluttered mind and focus on the task in hand. They had under six hours to catch the killer, and progress rested on them opening the box, but what with all the day’s death and chaos, Emma struggled to concentrate on what the combination might be.
Despite her best efforts, images of Sophie’s and Uncle Martin’s corpses still flashed through her jumbled thoughts. She tried to pull her mind away from the images.
“The Volinari are a complication,” Nightshade said. “An added pressure we could do without.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Olivia said.
Emma’s eyebrows arched. “You’ve heard of the Volinari?”
Olivia nodded. “Sure. Dad told me about them. The Volinari have been around for hundreds of years. If a family has a problem, no matter how bad, they can take care of it.”
“For a price,” Nightshade muttered.
“You must complete every deal,” Olivia said. “Every debt paid.”
“Do you think they have something to do with the murders?” Emma asked Nightshade. “Could this be some kind of twisted setup?”
Nightshade pursed her lips as she kept in step with Emma and Olivia. “There are too many pieces of the puzzle missing, but so far it makes no apparent sense for these Volinari people to have killed Sophie and taken the casket.”
“Why not?” Emma said as they reached a fork in the path and headed right, following the route between the trees.
“Because if they are as powerful as everyone believes, they wouldn’t need to play such an obvious trick to cause a war between the Greco and Hernandez clans. It’s amateurish.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Emma said. “Maybe they’re trying to be obvious.”
Nightshade glanced at her. “I don’t think so. They’d come up with more subtle ways of achieving their objective if that was their goal. And if you wipe out crime families, you have no clients.”
Emma frowned. “How can you know what they think?”
“I can’t.” Nightshade glanced away. “But if they’ve survived for so long, they’re far too advanced to do a botched snatch-and-grab.”
Olivia shook her head. “The way you described it, Em, it sounds pretty sophisticated, what with the whole hiding in a statue and breaking into the vault thing.”
Emma’s eyes glazed over as a weight pressed down on her. Now they were not only trying to find the killer of Sophie and Uncle Martin, but also tracking down the Droeshout casket. Nightshade had deliberately sent Emma’s mother on a fool’s errand. How long before Mum figures that out? An hour? Less?
So, they needed to open the box and get everything resolved before the Volinari lost patience and executed Emma’s entire family.
Emma, Nightshade and Olivia walked up a steep incline and arrived at Flamsteed House— home of the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time—a tight cluster of brick buildings with a copper telescope dome at one end.
Emma dropped into the middle bench of a row of three in front of a stone plinth which held an imposing bronze statue of General Wolfe gripping a telescope across his chest. The vantage point gave a commanding panorama of London, with the dome of the O2 Arena on the right. The skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and beyond filled the rest of the scene.
Emma unzipped the sports bag, lifted out the box, and set it down on the bench.
Both Nightshade and Olivia remained standing, looking uneasy, as if they were prepared to run for it at any moment.
Emma examined the combination lock: six digits. That meant a million possible codes. She studied the box itself, but it was well made, with internal hinges. There was no quick way to break it open without risking the contents.
Emma stared at the numbers, then closed her eyes. She thought back to the water tank at the Café in the Crypt, working hard not to look into her uncle’s lifeless form. She rechecked for any serial numbers. There weren’t any, so Emma moved around the kitchen and searched for other numbers, but the clean, sparse walls gave up no clues.
Frustrated, Emma looked at Nightshade. “I can’t see anything.” Out of desperation, she tried one-two-three-four-five-six, and several other combinations, but nothing worked. She growled under her breath.
“Relax,” Nightshade said. “Look again. You’re missing something.”
In her mind’s eye, Emma peered around the kitchen and the tank, then followed Mac into the crypt. She scanned the walls, the ceiling, and the gravestones.
Her gaze rested on the birthday present. She stared at the colourful paper, the ribbon, and then the tag: For Emma.
Emma gasped and her eyes snapped open. She rotated the wheels, setting a day, month, and year, then pressed the button.
The lock disengaged with a soft click.
Nightshade beamed at her.
“What was the code?” Olivia asked.
“My birthdate,” Emma said. “It’s a present for me. So obvious, I should have seen it ages ago.”
Olivia grinned too. Then she took a large step back, and another. Nightshade did the same.
Emma glowered at them. “You really think this could be a bomb?”
They both shrugged.
“Great. Thanks.” Emma’s attention moved back to the box. “Why’s it my birthday? Why the hell is the killer targeting me?” If her mother and father found out, they’d freak. “If the killer knows my date of birth, are they close to me somehow?”
“Only one way to find out.” Nightshade nodded at the box.
Emma gripped the lid with both hands, held her breath, and swung it open.
26
Emma peered into the box. A few items lay at the bottom. She glanced at Nightshade and Olivia, and gave them a look as if to say, ‘See? Nothing blew up. I still have all my fingers.’
Emma reached in and pulled out the first object: a stainless-steel front door key, standard design, except there were no numbers or a manufacturer’s name engraved on the bow. In fact, on closer insp
ection, someone had filed off any identifying marks, and then done a poor job of polishing it afterward.
Clearly satisfied the box wasn’t about to explode, Nightshade and Olivia joined Emma at the bench.
She set the key on her lap and retrieved the next item: an electronic timer. The killer had glued the buttons into a fixed position and the display counted down: thirty-eight minutes and fifteen seconds, fourteen seconds, thirteen . . .
Emma’s stomach tightened as she set it on the bench next to her. She removed the last item—a torn-out book page with pieces of a London map stuck all over it, only leaving a single paragraph of text visible:
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage
Emma typed a search into her phone. “Shakespeare again. Romeo and Juliet.” She looked at Nightshade with a fearful expression. “Does that mean the killer hasn’t stopped?” Her mind whirred. Who’s next? Emma texted each of her parents and warned them to remain vigilant.
“Well, at least the killer didn’t encrypt the message this time.” Nightshade folded her arms. “Makes our life somewhat easier.” She raised an eyebrow. “If only we could figure out what the hell it means or relates to.”
Emma put the page on top of the box and the three of them leaned in for a better look.
“What’s the deal with the decoupage map stuck all over it?” Olivia asked.
Nightshade tilted her head one way, then another, muttering under her breath.
Emma did the same as she tried to make out the road names. “Looks like this part of the map is Whitechapel.” She pointed to the largest section.
Olivia’s eyes widened. “A reference to Jack the Ripper?”
“Right now, we can only guess,” Nightshade said.
Emma gestured at the paragraph of text. “Some letters are darker than the others, as though someone has gone over them with a pen.” She opened the notepad app on her phone.
On the top line of text the L in fearful stood out, along with the L in love. Emma entered the double letters into her phone and moved on to the second line. The I in their had been bolded, along with A, W, T, the N’S in children’s, U, L, M, I, H, the C in traffic, O, and finally the S in the word stage.
Emma exhaled. “Okay, that leaves us with . . . ” She held up the screen so they could all see.
L L I A W T N’S U L M I H C O S
“It’s an anagram,” Nightshade said. “I think we can assume the N-apostrophe-S is likely to be at the end of a possessive noun.”
“The name of a place?” Emma’s stomach knotted as she peeked at the timer: thirty-two minutes and fifty seconds, forty-nine seconds . . .
In her notepad app, she cut and pasted the N-apostrophe-S onto its own line.
“Let’s see. What anagrams do we have on offer?” Nightshade’s eyes narrowed and she murmured, “Calm, halt, mail, watch, chill, acts-”
“Ooh.” Olivia waved a finger at the letters. “Thallium.”
Emma gave her a dubious look.
“What?” Olivia said. “It’s a metal. On the periodic table.”
“I know what it is,” Emma said. “But I can’t think of any place in London called that.”
“What do you mean?” Olivia said. “There could definitely be a Thallium Bridge, or Thallium Palace Gardens.”
Emma smirked.
Nightshade continued with the anagrams. “Switch, hall, limit.” She raised her eyebrows at Olivia. “Tsunami? Tsunami Bridge?”
Olivia shook her head. “There’s only one N available, and you reckon it’s already being used at the end of a word.” She poked out her tongue. “Smart arse.”
“Valid point,” Nightshade said.
“Which one?”
“Both.” Nightshade focused on the letters again. “Let’s see . . . that means aunt, haunt and saint are no good to us, so what else do we have?”
“Music?” Olivia offered.
Emma gazed at the Whitechapel map pieces, then the letters on her phone, and back again. “Music Hall.” She jabbed a finger at the top corner of the map, read the nearby road names, and her eyes widened. A quick glance at the remaining letters corresponded to the name of the destination. “Wilton’s Music Hall. We’ve got it.” With a renewed rush of adrenaline, Emma looked at the timer. They had twenty-nine minutes to get there.
She leapt to her feet, shoved the box and page into the sports bag, the key into her pocket, and gripped the countdown clock. “Let’s go.” As she jogged toward the road with Nightshade and Olivia, Emma only hoped they’d figured out the right location.
By the time the taxi pulled over in Ensign Street, the killer’s countdown clock only had six minutes remaining. Emma paid the driver and hurried up Graces Alley, a paved pedestrian walkway with buildings on one side and a yellow brick wall enclosing a primary school on the other. At the far end was a row of shuttered windows.
Emma, Nightshade and Olivia stopped at a set of weather-beaten double doors, with the faded remains of red paint, surrounded by old cracked stone. Pillars flanked the door, embellished with carved roses, sunflowers, pineapples, grapes and pumpkins, along with other fruits and flowers.
On either side of those strange adornments, as if to counter them with a more modern and tasteless embellishment, sat vertical signs of red letters on clear acrylic, declaring their destination as WILTONS.
“Wilton’s Music Hall,” Emma said under her breath.
The doors had no handles or locks, only a buzzer and intercom mounted at the edge of the frame.
Emma moved down to the next set of doors, also painted in a muted red, with vertical windows. She cupped her hands around her face and peered through the glass.
A solitary candle flickered in the gloom. It sat on a curved mahogany-topped bar with a copper-effect facade covered in filigree. Hundreds of years’ worth of paint flaked from every surface of the room, be it the wooden ceiling or plaster walls. Chunks had fallen away, exposing the old structure behind.
Emma looked back at Nightshade and Olivia. “No one’s in there as far as I can tell.” She pulled the stainless-steel key from her pocket and tried it in the lock. Sure enough, the door opened. Emma took a deep breath, removed her sunglasses, and stepped inside.
As her eyes adjusted, details rushed forward and knocked Emma back a step: to the right sat an upright piano, and a sign with bulbs spelled out Wiltons. Rows of bottles lined shelves behind the bar, along with blackboards listing prices, random advertisements on the other walls, an old wooden specials board, modern speakers mounted in each corner of the room, two equally modern tills with large LCD displays, a coffee machine, beer stein, a tea towel hung on a brass hook, a framed sign with the word bar, various-sized glasses, jars, a few scattered tables, along with an assortment of mismatched chairs and stools, old cast iron radiators—
“No. Stop. Too much.” Emma squeezed her eyes closed as the details overwhelmed her. Not now. Must hurry.
Olivia gripped her shoulder. “Deep breaths. You’re okay.”
Emma breathed in through her mouth and out through her nose, stemming the flood of information. She focused on the timer and her stomach lurched. Two minutes and twenty-six seconds. Twenty-five, twenty-four . . .
Floorboards creaked underfoot as Emma moved further into the gloomy interior with Nightshade and Olivia. “Where are they?” she whispered. Emma approached the doorway. Her ears strained for any sound, then she stepped through.
The next room had a flagstone floor and a freshly painted ceiling with modern spotlights, along with a box office counter, complete with stacks of visitor brochures. A solitary candle flickered in the gloom.
A stone staircase stood to their right. A sign above it declared it to be the way to the balcony and cocktail bar. Another lit candle sat at the top.
“Breadcrumbs,” Nightshade whi
spered. “We’re being led.”
Shoulders hitched, Emma tiptoed up the stairs with Nightshade and Olivia. She reached the top, and turned left. Four stone steps led to a narrow corridor, with more candles lighting the way.
Emma’s stomach did a backflip. “One minute.”
Halfway along the next corridor, a candle was placed on the floor, opposite a set of closed doors with a sign that read: ‘Balcony’.
Emma signalled for Nightshade and Olivia to stay close. Then she opened the doors and crept through.
The balcony spanned the width of the theatre and ran down the sides of the auditorium. Rows of chairs filled the hall below, lined up in front of a two-tiered stage.
Emma checked the timer again. Twenty-eight seconds, twenty-seven . . . “We’re here. What are we supposed to be looking for?”
The three of them hurried down a flight of stairs, then ran to the front of the stage, and scanned all around.
Emma raced up two sets of wooden steps, peeked behind the curtain, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Three, two, one . . .
The timer buzzed.
27
Emma hurled the killer’s timer across the stage and it smashed against the back wall.
Ruby, with her trademark grey bob and bright-red lipstick, lay supine on a faux stone plinth, surrounded by a hundred lit candles on the floor. Someone had placed Ruby’s hands across her chest like an Egyptian pharaoh, and a glass sat by her side, half filled with a murky liquid.
Emma hurried along a winding path through the forest of candles, and ignored Nightshade’s pleas to be cautious. She reached Ruby and pressed two fingers to her neck, but the cold skin made Emma recoil. “This isn’t right.” A lump formed in her throat.
Nightshade joined her. “We must proceed with caution, darling. We don’t know what killed Ruby.”
Emma spun around, threw her arms wide, and shouted into the empty space, “What do you want from us?” She dropped to her knees. “It’s not fair. We were here before the timer ran out.”
Death in London: A Nightshade Crime Thriller (Emma & Nightshade Mystery Series Book 1) Page 15
