Kramer smiled. “No, although we will be visiting the Museum of Fine Arts.”
“Yeah? What’s that got to do with us?”
“Their collection of antiquities. It seems like one of the items might be of interest.”
Kramer gave him a nudge towards the car door and headed around to the driver’s side. By the time Ben settled into the passenger seat Kramer had the car bouncing off the unmade parking lot and onto the asphalt of the county road. Ben watched the small green plants drift by. Thousands of them. Maybe millions. All waiting for harvest time.
“Do you want to know more?” Kramer asked.
“About Boston?”
“What else could there be?”
“These things in the field.” Ben pointed out of the window at them. “I want to know more about them.”
Silence. Wow, I think Kramer might be lost for words. There’s a first.
Chapter Two
“Hurry up, please, I need you to all stay together.” Marian James’ headache had started as soon as the tour group assembled in the main hall of Grestley Manor. She hated groups of more than eight, and especially ones with visitors who didn’t look like they wanted to be there. The two slow-coaches were a man and a woman. Marian sighed as the female half of the couple stopped again and lifted an expensive looking digital camera up to her eye and framed a shot of a Stubbs painting. The man gave Marian a look that chilled her heart. His face bore plenty of scars on one cheek, and he’d had his nose broken in the past. But it was his eyes that scared her the most. Mean looking, as he stared at her like a predator studies its prey.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“We need to be moving on. This tour of the private apartments takes forty-five minutes, and we really can’t stop every few seconds for your... friend to take photographs.”
“I bought the camera for her last week.” The man took a pace towards Marian, and she retreated a step. “She’s excited by it.”
“Well, yes, I can understand that. It looks like a very nice camera, but we do need to move on.”
The other members of the group made grumpy shuffling noises behind Marian, and she glanced around at them. “Be with you in a moment.”
“So why can’t we continue on our own?” the man asked, in his north-east England accent.
“Because these are private apartments and you have to be escorted around them,” Marian spoke as if to a child.
“It’s a bit gloomy here anyway,” the man’s partner said, as she studied the screen on the back of her camera.
“You mean your pictures are shit?” the man asked.
“Yeah.” She slung the camera over her shoulder and looked at Marian. “Is there a quick way out of here?”
Marian saw salvation. “Yes, I’ve got keys that will unlock a door back the way we came. It leads straight out into a corridor that is open to members of the public.”
“Let’s go then,” the man said.
Marian eased past them. They looked an odd couple. He must be somewhere in his early thirties while she looked much younger, possibly early twenties and with some mixed heritage. Marian bustled to the locked door and pulled out her keys. I would never have put them together, she thought, as they walked through the now open door into the public area. He, no doubt, made money from drugs or gambling, with that face of his. She looked like a gangster’s moll, or what did they call them nowadays? An internet bride. The last glimpse Marian had of their faces made her glad she was on this side of a once more locked door.
***
“Stuck up bitch,” Geordie muttered as key and lock rattled noisily in the hundred-year-old door.
“I could see she was getting to you,” Daisy said, with a grin.
“Too right. All that posh speaking and talking to us like we’re five-year-old kids.”
“It’s the house,” Daisy said. “She has to act in a certain manner when taking tourists around.”
“You sound like her now.” Geordie watched an elderly couple come towards them. The old boy looked about to expire as he shuffled along the hardwood corridor.
“I think you’ve got an inferiority complex.” Daisy managed to keep a straight face as Geordie glowered at her. The Parachute Regiment soldier, now on permanent secondment to Daisy’s secret service unit, looked like he was chewing nails as the two elderly tourists tottered passed. They left behind a stale ‘old-people’ smell that made Daisy wrinkle her nose.
“Are you quite finished insulting me?” Geordie asked.
“No.” Daisy handed him the camera.
The old folks vanished around a turn in the corridor. Daisy checked both ways to make sure no-one was coming before she pulled a small wallet out of her jacket pocket. She took a lock pick from the wallet and set to work on the door. The old lock gave way in a matter of seconds. Daisy stood and very carefully turned the handle. She edged the door open a fraction to make sure Marian and the tour group had moved on. “All clear.”
“Roll on, then,” Geordie said.
Daisy vanished from view as the door closed behind her. Geordie leaned against it. He pressed the play button on the camera and started spooling through the photos Daisy had taken since their arrival three-hours earlier. He sighed. One-hundred-and-twenty. How she’d managed that amount was beyond him. Still, it gave him something to do as she got all the sexy work skulking around the private apartments.
Geordie looked up as another couple came along the corridor. He gave them a smile and returned to the screen. Most of the photos showed the outside. What interested him and Daisy lay on the inside, locked away in a secure room that carried a state-of-the-art alarm system. Alone again, he checked his watch and wondered how she was doing.
***
Daisy waited for twenty seconds or so on the other side of the door, standing and listening. The tour party were long gone, or at least far enough that she couldn’t hear Marian’s strident voice explaining the history of the building. Geordie could be a bit wearing sometimes, but Daisy had to agree that ‘stuck-up’ fitted Marian perfectly but perhaps not the ‘bitch’ part.
Happy the coast was clear, Daisy turned right, tracking through the private rooms she’d already covered during the tour. The family who owned the property disappeared for the summer when the tourist season peaked. They had a choice of the Caribbean, the South of France or Australia with houses in all three. At the moment, most of them were in France, with a couple working in London so the only danger Daisy faced would be staff, and she could do a ‘sorry, I’m lost’ number on them, at least until she breached the secure room. After that, any explaining would most likely be done down at the local police station.
Working from memory, and now wearing a pair of thin plastic gloves she dug out of an inside pocket, Daisy moved deeper into the silent rooms. She could understand how people thought places like this could be haunted. The air seemed heavier, as if the weight of history pressed down on her. Marian had run through the number of ghosts that, according to legend, stalked the hallways. Most came from the time of Elizabeth I. The family in residence at the time were Catholic, and several had died, plus a priest they had been harbouring, for their faith. Three killed in the grounds of the property and the fourth hung, drawn and quartered in London. Throw in murders, the Civil War and enough death bed confessions to fill a couple of novels plus a television adaptation, and there were plenty of candidates for the ghost of the month.
Of course, the tourists all laughed as if ghosts didn’t exist. Daisy and Geordie exchanged a knowing glance. Maybe the ghosts in this place were made up, but Daisy knew that ghosts existed along with gods, demons, parallel worlds and any kind of monster you wanted to pull from the pages of mythology. She’d seen some and fought others. Geordie had used up all of his luck surviving this long working for the DES. Together, Daisy and Geordie had no doubt spirits would be walking through the Manor.
She paused. A floorboard creaked. Daisy ducked behind an eighteenth-century sofa. One of the reasons s
he was here, and not Geordie, was her size. At five-three, she could hide easier. Daisy peered around the end of the sofa and saw a middle-aged man with receding hair walk into view. He wore faded brown overalls that had the logo of the manor on the breast pocket and carried a set of step ladders. Daisy closed her eyes as he stopped and looked up at the ceiling. Not here. Not now. The workman positioned the ladder, tested it and started up. Daisy checked the angles and hoped she’d be out of sight. She couldn’t move much anyway. The floorboards weren’t exactly new, and any shift in her weight could set them off on all manner of squeaks and squeals. The aluminium ladders made enough racket themselves as the workman reached the top. Daisy peeked again and saw him changing a couple of bulbs in a hideous electric chandelier.
The hard floor pressed into her kneecaps as Daisy hunkered down. The sofa had a gap beneath it that meant she could see the legs of the stepladder. The workman whistled tunelessly as he fiddled with the bulbs and Daisy checked her watch. Using plans obtained from the local fire authority, she and Geordie had worked out a seven-minute time frame for accessing the secure room, grabbing her target, and bugging out of the private apartments. That held a two minute period to cover for shit like this. She counted the seconds as they ticked by, not concerned yet because the worker’s feet came into view as he descended the ladder.
Daisy became worried as he turned and walked towards the sofa. His whistling had stopped. She tensed, adrenalin surging for fight or flight. His feet turned, and he sat down with a thump on the sofa. The carved wooden feet of the furniture slid back on the bare floorboards and pinned Daisy to the wall, her shoulders crushed between velvet and brickwork.
Shit.
Eighteenth-century dust splashed in a cloud where her left shoulder dug into the back of the sofa. Daisy closed her eyes and her mouth, but the stuff got into her nose and the urge to sneeze claimed every fibre of her body. Daisy clamped fingers onto her nostrils. She breathed out with her mouth wide open, trying to clear the air around her as the worker said,
“Hello, Bill. I’m finished up with all the bulbs that need changing. Are you still down at the gatehouse?”
A phone call? He’s making a fucking phone call?
“Well I reckoned by the time I’ve put the ladders away and got down to you it’ll be knocking off time, so I may as well push off now and come in early tomorrow to make a start on the painting with you.”
Daisy couldn’t hear the reply, but it seemed to drag on forever as the workman muttered ‘yeah’ and ‘uh-huh’ and ‘mmm’. She checked the time. Somehow her watch had jumped five minutes since she’s first ducked behind the sofa. She knew Geordie would give her a little bit of leeway, but if her entry went tits up, they’d agreed that Geordie would leave the manor by the nearest exit and head to a local pub. But knowing Geordie, he’d want to see some action and would come storming into the private apartments like a tornado.
And now the idiot is talking cricket.
Daisy practised some calming thoughts. The minute hand on her watch moved like the wind. The sofa seemed to press her tighter and tighter to the wall. More dust filtered out of the material, and Daisy wondered if this was the first time it had seen daylight in a couple of hundred years.
“Right-ho, Bill, see you in the morning.”
The sofa shifted again as he stood, his legs shoving it hard into Daisy. She kept in the yelp of pain as her shoulder ground into the wall. The workman reclaimed his step ladder and left the room, his tuneless whistle hanging in the air. Daisy held her place until she was sure he’d gone. She pushed the sofa away a few inches and stood to brush dust from her jacket. Daisy shook her head. Of all the times.
She took a breath. Calm. The secure room was through the next connecting door. At least the workman had turned up before she reached it. Daisy carried on now, aware of the time. She turned left and opened the panelled door to reveal the high security fitting behind it. The alarm control box was wall mounted. She flipped the front cover down and looked at the digital display and numeric keyboard. Researching the alarm company hadn’t been difficult. A hacker back at headquarters found Grestly Manor’s accounts and that led them to the company who installed and serviced the alarm. Another quick raid on the security company’s servers told them which model they’d installed.
As expected, Daisy looked at the latest in security monitoring systems. Or at least as secure as it could be if someone didn’t know the engineer’s override. Every alarm had a code that could gain entry for a service engineer to test the system. All Daisy had to do was recall the two five-figure numbers and hey-presto, the door locks clunked open. She blew a kiss at the alarm and entered the room.
Once, many years before, it had been a closet for storing linen. Now it held the most valuable items in the collection of antiques and antiquities. Daisy’s eyes roved over the packed shelves. The family were avid collectors, and good cataloguers as well. Each row and column of shelving contained items from specific time periods. She scanned across the columns and rows to the spot she wanted. Daisy knelt, so the three-inch high statuette stood at eye level with her. Exquisitely carved, the female form stared back at her with eyes that seemed to glow. Daisy reached out and touched it. She flinched at the heat that came out of the stone. Not burning hot, but enough to make her take a bit more care as she lifted the statuette from the shelf and slipped it into an inner pocket of her jacket.
Time to go.
Daisy pushed open the security door. A shadow loomed large in front of her, blocking all light from the room. She took a breath to scream as a hand clamped over her mouth, and an arm swept around her body and held her tight. Daisy’s heart stopped and started. She tried to breathe, but calloused skin sealed her lips closed. The man carried her into the secure room, kicking the door closed behind him.
“You’re not going to scream, are you?” Geordie asked as he released her.
Daisy took a heaving breath to calm her racing heart. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she put a hand out to steady herself and a shelf full of 17th Century porcelain rattled.
“You took so long I came looking for you, didn’t I,” Geordie said.
“I thought the idea was that you would be in the local pub chatting up the barmaid?” Daisy had some of her equilibrium back now, and Geordie’s dumb grin rankled her.
“Nah, that’s boring. I came to rescue the damsel in distress.”
“Well, as you can see, I’m not in distress.” Daisy straightened her jacket.
Geordie’s eyes went up and down her figure. “Yeah, I can see that. So why take so long?”
“A caretaker turned up to change some light bulbs. I had to hide. And then the guy made a five-minute phone call.”
“But you got the thing?” Geordie asked.
Daisy patted her jacket where the statuette warmed her body. “Safe and sound.”
“So we can go?”
“We can.”
Geordie nudged the door open, took a quick look and ushered Daisy out when he saw the coast was clear. She took a few seconds to close the security door and re-set the alarm. Geordie led her, cat-footed, through the private apartments. They heard and saw no member of staff. At the connecting door, Geordie cracked it open, saw that the coast was clear and opened it wide. He bowed and waved Daisy through, “After you, my lady,” he said in his best ‘Parker’ voice.
“Thank you, my man.” Daisy stepped out into the corridor.
Geordie closed the door. “Best get rid of those gloves,” he said.
Daisy stripped off the thin blue rubber gloves and stuffed them into a pocket. Geordie gave her the camera back. She hung it over her neck and said, “Which way is out?”
“No idea,” Geordie said. “But if we’re going to do this properly we go the long way, and you take as many photos as possible.”
“Why?” Daisy asked in surprise.
“If an alarm has gone off we don’t want to be the ones who are seen running from the scene of the crime. Hide in plain sight i
s my motto. Hanging around and taking photos is what we did before you broke in, so it’s what we’re going to do now.”
Daisy sighed. Geordie led her on through the manor, following the red arrows for the unaccompanied tour. He stopped at every display and got her to snap some shots. Geordie even stuck his ugly mug into some of them. Although as she framed him, Daisy had to admit that he wasn’t ugly, more rugged with the scars and the broken nose. She knew some of her friends from back home would be jealous if they knew she worked with a guy from Special Forces.
Forty-five minutes later Geordie sauntered across the gravel car park to the Mondeo estate they’d signed out that morning. By then Daisy’s legs were beginning to shake. Her every thought dominated by the idea that someone would discover the theft. She imagined police summoned by silent alarm standing ready to arrest her. She’d get released, but the thought that Geordie and his macho act could ruin her career pissed her off.
Geordie leaned against the car and studied the manor house. “Never figured how people could live in a place that looks so gloomy,” he said.
“That was modern architecture in its day,” Daisy said. “Anyone who lives there now was born to it.”
“Yeah.” Geordie opened the boot and pulled a small steel box into view. He glanced around. All clear.
Daisy took the statuette out of her pocket and placed it into the box. The padded interior was shaped to accept the carving. Geordie looked at it as Daisy closed and sealed the lid. “Is that it? All this hassle for a tiny thing like that?”
“That ‘thing’,” Daisy said, “is almost five thousand years old.”
“A bit like the old biddy who gave us the tour, then,” Geordie said, as they got into the car.
“Geordie,” Daisy said, with a warning voice.
“What?”
“She was only doing her job.”
“I’ve heard that before,” he muttered.
***
The Tomb (Scarrett & Kramer Book 3) Page 2
