Thrasher motioned with his hand as a magician does when he wants something to disappear. Felicity smiled again as she studied Thrasher. Two smiles in a day, he thought, this is approaching a personal best for her.
“That’s the second time today that someone has recommended distracting Mr Bacchus, with an injury or kidnapping and now you have added a new cause for distraction. Gerald, I’m promoting you to my personal counsellor. Along with an obscene pay rise to excite your wife, comes an increase in responsibilities. The first of these is to arrange the kidnapping of Annabel Anderson and keeping her out of harm’s way until our next shipment arrives. If she were to become dead at any point, it wouldn’t be a huge problem. I assume you know suitable people?”
***
Jemima’s phone beeped with an incoming text. ‘Have the complete diary and on our way back from Cambridge. Penny really nice. Chinese at home, you get the wine, I’ll get food. OK? See you about seven. Love you.’
Jemima smiled already looking forward to an evening with Ben. She allowed herself a couple of minutes to wallow in happiness. How had Ben, ten years her junior, achieved that? His vulnerability? No, she decided, it was his smile, coupled with vulnerability and a spiky outer shell that she had fallen in love with. The spikiness she was softening. He adopted his confrontational approach to compensate for his difficult leg. He needed to discover that the people who mattered, any normal, right thinking person, would see him for what he was.
She clicked on the mouse and brought the live map of the western side of Colombia up onto the screen of her laptop. Jemima located the ships that Ben had identified as being of the correct class and were CHC Industries ships. The display showed that none of them had docked in Buenaventura to take on cargo. If any of these ships were to arrive in the UK by the end of the following week, they should have cleared Colombia already. She typed into the search engine. Distance from Buenaventura to Southampton was a shade less than five thousand miles. If the weather was good and the tanker could average fifteen knots, then the journey time would be about fourteen days. Pablo had told her the ship was due to arrive in the UK in about ten days, but he could be a lying. She was also guessing, Southampton based upon conversations she had overheard between her grandfather and Felicity. So if Pablo had been honest, and the drugs were going to Southampton, the ship should be four days into its journey. Jemima did the mental arithmetic and said to herself,
“OK, fourteen hundred miles or thereabout. That would put a tanker just short of Antigua.” Jemima got up and began pacing around Ben’s living room arguing with herself.
“There’s one major problem with our supposition. The three ships we have been watching are all going in the wrong direction.” She stood in front of the MacBook and stared at the three vessels that they had agreed were the only ships of the correct size to go through the Panama Canal. The CHC Princess, CHC Amazonia and CHC Cartagena. The Princess was heading down the coast of Ecuador, The Amazonia had gone even further and was just short of Lima and the Cartagena was off the coast of Guatemala. All of the tankers were in the Pacific, not the Caribbean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean.
Jemima resumed her pacing around the room, deep in thought. She stopped in front of the computer and began typing into the search engine.
“We have a problem.” She said out loud to herself continuing she said. “There is no Cortez tanker of any size on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. This can only mean one of two things. Where you a lying Colombian shit Pablo? Or, and this is really off the wall, but… No impossible.” Her fingers kept typing, then flicking between screens and then typing again. Staring at her own reflection in the screen of the computer as she considered the results of her searching and said to herself,
“I have to call Ben, he needs to see this. Jemima, you’ve been had. Shit, shit, shit.”
Jemima picked up her iPhone and tapped in the four digit unlock code. Ben’s number was top of her recent call list and she tapped it to connect the call. Instead of getting a dial tone and then hearing the ringing at the other end, her iPhone began ringing and vibrating. ‘No caller ID’ displayed across the screen. Without thinking, she pressed reject and tapped Ben’s number again. Again her attempt at an outgoing call was blocked by an unidentified incoming call. In frustration she tapped the green accept button and snarled,
“What?”
“Jemima, good afternoon it’s Felicity.”
“I’ll repeat my previous question, ‘What?’”
There was a pause from the other end of the line before Jemima heard Felicity again.
“We need to talk. I’ve come down to this ridiculous little town to see you and talk, woman to woman. There are things we need to say to each other before it’s too late.”
Jemima’s response was terse and to the point.
“No.”
“I’m at a hotel. The Eastbury? Have a coffee and give me ten minutes of your time. I need you to see how wrong you are about me. I need your help. Please. I’ll meet you at your friend’s shop if you prefer, The Library?”
Felicity held her breath as Jemima hesitated. She knew her sister would not be sure how to react. Felicity was for the first time that she could remember sounding vulnerable, unsure. Was Jemima believing her little girl lost routine or would knowing Felicity stop her believing?
“OK. Twenty minutes at The Library. Felicity, this had better be good.”
Without saying another word, she hung up and smiled. She walked over to the huge picture window in her front room and stared out over Regents Park for a moment before speed dialling a number on her mobile. The call was answered and she said,
“The Library, fifteen minutes. Text me when you’re done.”
Jemima sent Ben a text as she was heading out of the door to meet Felicity telling him to look at the information she had left for him on her MacBook. The walk to the bookshop was about five minutes or it was by the only route she had found so far. Ben had a small two-bedroom cottage in Newland, which she loved for its centrality and the complete peace and quiet when you closed the front door. Today as she had a few minutes to kill she decided to go along Newland until it reached Long Street and then along Long Street to the shop. She figured that this way would be a few minutes longer, but it gave her time to think.
Jemima put on her Bose noise cancelling headphones, plugged them into her iPhone and began to play Handel’s Water Music. She loved the pomp and ceremony of the opening bars of the Music for the Royal Fireworks.
The walk along Long Street, past the Eastbury Hotel was all familiar territory. She could see the Abbey poking up above the bookshop in mediaeval splendour. As she approached the corner opposite the bookshop, she realised she hadn’t any cash and needed to go to the cash machine on the other side of the road. She insisted that everything she had at The Library she paid for. Stopping opposite the bank, she waited for a car on the opposite side to go past and then began walking across the road. It was a narrow road, thirty or forty feet across. You could almost jump it.
The van screeched around the corner out of South Street, slid left, barely able to stay on the road and accelerated hard towards her. As Jemima got to the middle of the road, the van surged around the corner into Long Street. It covered the distance to Jemima in tenths of a second and struck her a hard glancing blow throwing her into the air and back towards the pavement. As she tumbled through the air all Jemima thought, who was it driving the van? She was sure she knew them, but couldn’t focus on who it was.
***
Charles’s shout of delight when the van hit Jemima caused Helena to smile. A demon with his degree of malignity had real potential. Every successful demon needed an assistant. She’d have a word with the dark one next time they were downstairs.
“That’ll slow the little bitch down” Charles’s pleasure at his niece’s injuries was open and enthusiastic.
“One down and two to go. I’m not sure which of these I’m enjoying more. Maiming a snotty dyke or hiding a goody two shoe
s god botherer.”
Helena reminded Charles before he got to carried away,
“Pleasurable as senseless violence is, these two events have a purpose. They will act to distract William and Ben from what they should be doing, to bedside vigils and bumbling manhunts. As we are entering a crucial period, we have to stack the cards in Felicity’s favour. When Ben’s bedside vigil is temporarily truncated, William will find himself under unrelenting pressure. What do you do? Help your friends or chase unformed shadows?”
Charles looked doubtful,
“The version of the diary Penny Morton had and has now given to Ben was one we were not aware of. Jonas was killed because of a maybe, a slim chance he had discovered a secret or seen a document that Johnson had left in his unsecured office.”
Helena stared at him in disbelief.
“Your most important documents left with an employee? How have you not spent the majority of your life in prison for stupidity? What you need to be asking yourself is, could Sanderson know anything? If so, could he have bequeathed it to Bacchus and the cripple? Can I get it back before they realise what they have?”
Charles waved her analysis away as irrelevant and continued,
“However, he could have seen important documents, business destroying documents, if they had been in the cabinet or on the desk, but they weren’t.”
Helena looked at Charles and raised a questioning, accusatory eye at him. He squirmed for a moment before holding his hands up and saying,
“Ok, ok. It transpired he had not been as security conscious as I had first thought and certain documents pertaining to shipment methods had been left on his desk. He had stuffed them in his files before I had arrived. Johnson passed away from natural causes soon after. These documents were generic and didn’t mention cocaine, just a different method of transportation for certain substances the company might or might not want to send separate to the main cargo.”
Helena still looked sceptical and confirmed this by saying,
“Felicity needs someone, anyone to get that diary before it is decoded. We need to see her now.”
***
Annabel dropped Ben outside of the bookshop and continued down Long Street to St Swithin’s Road. She hadn’t wanted to get involved in a Ben/William blow by blow account of their day. She was tired and wanted a long deep bath accompanied by a very large Laphroaig single malt and some Classic FM. Her text to him had been brief. ‘Ben coming to shop to tell all. I’m off for a bath and your whiskey, see you soon, bring Chinese. Love A.’
As she turned right into Newland, a newish red van accelerated up behind her, coming within inches of her bumper. She looked behind her but couldn’t see very much because of the angle of the sun on their windscreen. She accelerated, using the power of the Audi to move away from the idiot in the van. As she swung hard into The Avenue, the van surged forward and slew to the right and then past her. It accelerated for a few meters, then the van driver jammed on his brakes and slid to an abrupt halt. Annabel still unnerved by the erratic overtaking, reacted without thinking and jammed her foot down hard on the brake pedal skidding into the kerb and the impact slamming her forward against her seat belt.
Annabel looked up, shaken by the bump and the aggressive driving of the van driver. Muttering to herself she said,
“Fucking idiot. What in God’s name does he think he’s doing?” She rubbed her sternum, which had taken the brunt of the impact when the car had crashed and took a careful breath. Shaken she sat for a moment and then she reached for the door handle, to get out and speak to the driver of the red van. The rear door of the Audi was flung open and a gloved hand holding a small aerosol canister came over Annabel’s right shoulder and squirted a sweet smelling mist into her nose and mouth. Within seconds, she was unconscious.
***
The office door opened and Ben eased himself into the office carrying his crutch and a tray of coffees for William and himself. He put the tray onto the desk and sank into a battered leather armchair. He started to speak and then saw that William was on the telephone. Stopping until he had finished his call, he asked,
“Annabel?”
“Annabel’s voice mail. She asked for a Chinese takeaway for supper this evening, my second sight is failing me and I have no idea which of her many favourites might be the one she would like tonight. She must already be in the bath.”
Ben looked a little surprised,
“That’s quick. She dropped me at the door ten minutes ago. Anyway, to business. On the way back, I scanned Jonas’s entire diary in again in case it wasn’t just the end that was missing. The computer has been chewing on them for about an hour and has completed the majority of the original text. That part will be quicker as the intuitive nature of the program means it recognises code or sequences it has seen before. The new section is taking longer. Even though the processes are the same for breaking the code in the new section as they were in the original text, the program has to decode each individual word.”
Ben looked at the timer underneath the processing data and read,
“About thirty-five minutes until we will have clear text.” Ben took a sip of his coffee and then a larger gulp.
“Penny highlighted something none of us was aware of. Jonas was an expert in the neurochemistry of cocaine. He was expected to continue with his research for his doctorate, but unexpectedly switched to alternative fuels.”
As Ben finished the final syllable of the sentence, the far side of the small room shimmered and Ernest and Juanita appeared. Without preamble Ernest said,
“William, what security have you got?”
William looked confused,
“Security? Alarms on the shop, a safe for documents. Is that enough?”
Juanita answered,
“Personal security. The problem I mentioned has become far worse than I imagined. Helena, and with her consent and supervision, Charles are planning to use their powers outside of limbo.”
Ben looked at Juanita and said,
“Can they? This is starting to sound very witches and wizards. Magic wand fights on Sherborne high street. Glittery vapour trails around the Abbey?”
Ernest looked at Juanita perplexed,
“One of the first things you said to me was no ‘Harry Potter, no fire from finger tips, no magic wands and never on earth.’ Has that changed?”
Juanita shook her head to emphasise the importance of the point she was about to make.
“No. No form of magic; no wrong word.” She thought for a moment and then continued,
“No use of powers not available on earth has been allowed for over six hundred years and for good reason. Have you heard of the witch trials of Lucca? No? Not that surprising as the cleanup was almost perfect. The long and short of it is that Tuscany almost ceased to exist because of careless use of powers by the dead relatives vying to help their families gain ascendancy on earth. Glittery vapour trails and fire from fingers doesn’t scratch the surface of the antics these mediaeval Italians saw. So it was ruled by God that no powers could be used on earth. As she is more powerful than the devil, her word is law. Occasional minor infringements, when he has pushed against her authority have occurred, but nothing of any significance”
William interrupted Juanita’s reminiscing and brought back to their current situation.
“And now? How are Helena and Charles able to use these powers against us?”
“I don’t know. We overheard a conversation, snippets of conversation, it wasn’t clear. The essence was that we were getting too close and if Felicity couldn’t control the situation then Helena would. You need physical security, a show of force. Charles and Felicity need to see that you are serious. The diary. Have you copies?”
Ben answered,
“Everywhere. Laptops, hard copy is in our safe deposit box in the bank, I deposited it before I came here. Memory sticks for each of us to wear on our person and cloud storage in ten locations worldwide. It will take Felicity a year to work out where
they all are. As a precaution, even I don’t know the cloud locations. I can access them, but I don’t know their physical locations.”
William said,
“For physical security I know just the man, I’ll call him and hire him and some of his colleagues until this is all over. Very large and very reliable colleagues.”
The office door opened at the same time as William heard a gentle knocking. Debbie stepped in looking worried and upset, her face sheet white. Ben went over to her and said,
“Debbie, what’s wrong, what’s happened?”
Debbie gulped and then taking Ben’s hands in hers she said,
“The police are downstairs, it’s Jemima, she’s been in an accident. The doctors think she’ll be…” Ben had already flung the door open and was racing down the stairs as fast as he could with his crutch. William followed him at a run. As Ben came around the corner in the stairs and saw the two policemen he shouted at them,
“How is she? Where is she? What happened?”
The policeman tried to calm Ben down by being reassuring. Ignoring them he turned and said to William,
“Where’s the car?”
“Annabel still has it at home”
Sliding his iPhone out of his back pocket, he limped towards the door while dialling a number.
“Taxi numbers, shit engaged. What’s another one?” Turning back into the shop, he bellowed, “Debbie what’s a taxi number? I need a cab, now.”
The police sergeant said
“We can take you if you’d like. Ms Cortez is in Yeovil hospital and very insistent that she wanted you to be contacted and not her family.”
Ben nodded at the policeman and then turned to William with tears in his eyes and said,
“William can you come with me, please? I’ll grab my bag and then can we go.” The last part was aimed at the police sergeant. He nodded. William ran and got Ben’s bag and computer grabbed his own phone and asked Debbie to look after Wooster. As they climbed into the back of a police car and they started their blue light run to Yeovil, William sent a quick text to Annabel.
Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) Page 28
