The Temple Legacy

by D C Macey

  Parsol shook the empty carry case, heard nothing. He produced a knife and slashed at the velvet lining, ripping it out so he could look into the carcass of the box. Nothing, it was empty. Parsol cursed and threw it down onto the table.

  ‘Make her speak. Make her speak, now!’ said Parsol, urging his men on. They picked up the speed of delivery, a synchronised attack, one from the left, one from the right, blow after blow. Elaine’s head now had no time to recoil or settle from one blow before it was being propelled in the other direction. She was not going to last much longer.

  Cassiter gripped Parsol’s arm. ‘She’s not going to speak like this. Time’s running out, perhaps you should let me take over?’ he said, his voice steady and unflappable. All the while, he discreetly eyed the woman’s tightly bound hands. The skin showing one or two blemishes, marking her progress into middle age - some wrinkling too, but nonetheless, slim feminine fingers, exposed, defenceless, flexing and clenching in response to each head blow she received. He felt a stirring in his belly as he imagined how she would squeal under his touch.

  Parsol acknowledged the suggestion, but thought he would persist with the guards a little more; she could not hold out much longer.

  • • •

  ‘Grace, slow down. Running about is not going to help anyone,’ said Helen, as she finally caught up with the girl halfway back to the manse. She gripped Grace’s arm and applied just enough weight to make her slow up.

  Grace resisted for a moment; then allowed Helen to pull her to a stop. She turned to look Helen in the eye and waved back towards the church. ‘Helen, we’ve got to get in there. I know my Mum’s inside and if she’s not opening the door then what’s stopping her? We’ve got to get her out now.’

  Helen did not bother answering the question directly. She had a dark fear that she knew exactly what was stopping Elaine and if they didn’t act at once, it would be too late. It was clear that Grace shared that same fear. How do you break into a church with reinforced wooden doors? Helen did not have an answer.

  Grace did. She headed off again, making for the manse. ‘Come on, I know what to do. There’s a way, I’ll show you.’

  This time Helen did not try to stop her, but kept pace as they ran together along the road. Arriving first, Grace rattled the door handle in frustration. ‘Open it, quick,’ she shrieked.

  Helen eased her to one side, unlocked the door and they both stepped inside.

  ‘Lock it,’ said Grace.

  Helen looked surprised, hesitated and then decided to humour the girl and locked the door from the inside.

  In the hallway, Helen finally got the chance to challenge Grace. ‘Grace, what on Earth are you doing? We’ve got to get your mother out, not lock ourselves away in here. Wait a moment, just stop!’

  ‘Down here,’ said Grace, ignoring Helen’s instruction, heading off along the hallway and through the access door to the basement stairs. ‘There’s another way into the church,’ she shouted over her shoulder as they hurried down the stair into the basement. The stairway down and the basement passage at the bottom were well lit by a series of powerful electric lights. The walls of rough-hewn sandstone had never been bleached by acid rain or burning sun and they appeared as clean cut today as the day they had first been set in position.

  Leading off the passage were doorways into a series of four big storerooms, two to the right and two to the left. All of this Helen had seen when John Dearly had shown her around as part of her introduction when she first joined the parish. Several times since, she had been into the first of the storerooms, the biggest room where old parish records and mementos of previous eras were stored. These rooms were to have been part of her search target for today, before this latest problem had arisen.

  Grace quickly led Helen past the last of the doorways and four metres further along the passage came to an abrupt end, just about where it should, at the edge of the building’s foundations. Helen pressed her hand on the solid wall and turned to Grace. ‘Grace, there’s nothing here. We need to get back to the church now, raise the alarm and try to force our way in somehow,’ she said.

  Grace shook her head and pulled Helen back from the dead end, then stepped into the place Helen had vacated. ‘Trust me, just watch,’ she said, pressing her body and face up against the dead end wall. Slowly she slid her feet apart, steadily sliding them out across the passageway’s flagstone floor. Her feet came to a halt against the bottom of the sandstone walls. She twisted her ankles to force her toes out against the lowest sandstone blocks. Raising her arms she stretched her hands out as far as she could, her body seemed to describe a saltire cross against the dead end wall. Her hands carefully felt the stones above her head. Selecting particular stones, she pressed these too. The four invisible pressure points activated in unison, triggering an almost inaudible click and the whole end wall against which Grace was pressed simply disappeared.

  Helen looked on in disbelief. The wall had slid away to reveal a dark chasm, but then a series of lights started flickering into life, lighting a stairway down.

  ‘What on earth is this?’ said Helen.

  Grace looked at her and gave a fierce grin. ‘Told you so,’ she said. ‘Come on. This leads right into the church.’

  They both stepped into the secret stair and paused. Helen noted that the false wall was in fact a finely crafted door dressed with a thin veneer of stone. Grace selected spots near the top of the secret stairway and repeated her previous foot slide motion against stones at the base of the wall, this time triggering a closing mechanism. The wall closed behind them and they were sealed in.

  ‘Always close the door,’ said Grace. ‘I’ll show you the trick later.’

  Helen nodded, a hundred questions buzzing in her mind but she knew they would have to wait. If Elaine was in trouble, there was not a moment to lose. By the time they reached the foot of the stair Helen guessed they must be six, maybe seven metres below ground. Another dead end; Grace repeated her stretch and flex exercise and with another almost inaudible click the blank wall in front of her opened. It led directly into a black space, then more electric lights started to flicker on and Helen saw it was a tunnel that stretched off into the distance. Once they were in the tunnel, Grace paused briefly to close the door; it slotted back into the wall, smooth, featureless, invisible. The pair set off at a run along the well-lit and perfectly crafted tunnel.

  Helen focused on keeping pace with Grace, yet she could not help but marvel at the tunnel. It was dry, the air was fresh and the evenly spaced lights ran away into the distance until finally vanishing around a gentle bend. The uniform construction meant it was hard to judge distances with any accuracy. Grace stopped abruptly and Helen bumped into her, they held onto each other for a moment to avoid falling. Then, steadied, Grace started to cast about, searching out a particular sequence of stones where the walls met the tunnel floor.

  ‘Where are we Grace? What is this place? Whose is it?’ said Helen, firing out questions between gasps as she caught her breath again.

  Grace had found the stones she wanted and was positioning her feet to either side of the tunnel floor. ‘It’s our tunnel and we can get into the church here. It links the manse, the church, and somewhere else too. I don’t know where it ends up. It just seems to go on forever. John made me promise not to go and see, so I didn’t.’ Grace started to press her feet out against the stones. ‘Step back a little, you’re in the door’s way.’ Helen took two paces back.

  The now familiar sound, that almost inaudible click, signalled the opening door. It slid back to rest at the point where Helen had been standing. Beyond the newly open doorway, more lights flickered on automatically to illuminate a stairway that rose steeply away from them. They entered.

  Once Grace had closed the tunnel entrance behind them Helen went to lead but Grace held her back. ‘I know this bit, you’ll have to let me lead,’ she said.

  Helen nodded. ‘Be careful though, we don’t know what’s up there.’

  The
pair moved silently up the stone steps and then came to an abrupt halt at a dead end. Helen felt no surprise this time as Grace spread her limbs, wedging her feet against the lowest row of stones to either side of the top step, her hands stretched up above her head and pressed into secret places. The click sounded first and then the dead end wall at the top of the stair slipped away. The stairway lights behind them shone out to illuminate a wood panelled space, for all the world like some giant broom cupboard beneath a stair. She could not place where they were in the church. Then in a flash it dawned on her, the inverted staircase she could see running up the side and spiralling over their heads was certainly the underside of a staircase. There was one in the church, built into the great pulpit. They were beneath the pulpit.

  With another almost inaudible click, the space suddenly went dark as Grace closed the stairway door behind them. ‘Keep close to the side, next to me,’ whispered Grace, as she tugged Helen back against the now closed stone door. Helen could sense Grace’s hands moving firmly and confidently in the darkness above her head and then suddenly a crack of daylight appeared above them, quickly broadening out until the space above them was all daylight. The pulpit floor had dropped smoothly down, light flooding in behind it to illuminate a short stepladder that would carry them up into the pulpit and allow them to walk down the steps into the nave. It was the perfect concealment of an access point: no trap door; the whole floor was the door.

  This time Helen did not allow Grace to take the lead. She gripped the little handrails and pulled herself up the stepladder. Slowly she emerged into the pulpit and allowing her head to rise above it, she looked around. There was nobody in sight so she climbed out cautiously onto the pulpit’s top step and then hurried down into the body of the church. Grace was right behind her. They stood in silence. Helen had a restraining hand on Grace’s arm, listening to nothing, not a sound.

  Just as Helen decided it was safe to search the building, the silence was shattered by a howl. A woman’s long and agonising cry rolled out from the vestry and circulated round the church, bouncing across the nave. Both feared what the sound meant and raced for the vestry, Helen leading and Grace behind but making up ground fast. As they reached the vestry door Grace hit the front.

  In the vestry, Elaine McPhee remained tied to the chair; crouched beside her was Cassiter. Elaine’s body arched against her restraints as Cassiter worked the little finger of her right hand. It was snapped at both the first joint and the knuckle. Cassiter was busy grinding the parts of the broken digit back together, like a mortar and pestle, his actions triggering repeated and unbearable jolts of pain. Cassiter did not expect her to hold out much longer, but to accelerate the process he would snap the next finger. The guards had been stood down and now watched Cassiter at work; fascinated at the level of pain that was being generated for such little effort. They made mental notes so they could use the same technique in the future.

  Cassiter did not have a chance to defend himself as Grace burst in. Throwing herself across the vestry, screaming and swearing in rage she rushed at Cassiter’s crouching form. Her foot caught him square in the back sending him sprawling across the floor. Grace reached her mother and knelt to kiss her face, to touch her, but she stopped herself, aghast, confronted by the swollen mess that had once been her mother’s face and frightened that any contact would cause further suffering.

  Helen caught up with Grace and at the same moment they both saw Elaine’s right hand, swollen, the little finger obscenely distorted, still attached but somehow no longer part of the limb. Neither of the young women had a chance as the two bodyguards, lacking in imagination but strong on reflex, moved into action.

  The larger bodyguard circled Helen’s waist with his left arm and lifted her bodily off the ground. He tilted her over and held her locked tight like a parcel tucked under his arm, then moved her away from the chair, restrained her flailing right hand with his and let her legs kick out vainly into empty space behind him. A little woman like this? It was too easy. He looked to Parsol for instructions.

  The second bodyguard punched Grace hard in the back of the head jolting her forward. As she staggered, he moved in close. He quickly secured her in a headlock with his left arm; trapping her head tightly and keeping her bent double to the waist. He swung his right arm round to bring the flat of his hand hard into her face. He forced his hand tight over her mouth, muffling her outraged cursing, threats and objections. The bodyguard grinned triumphantly at his partner, and then he smirked at Elaine McPhee whose eyes no longer registered pain, just despair for her daughter.

  Cassiter pulled himself up off the threadbare rug, handkerchief dabbing at the little trickle of blood that seeped from the graze on his chin where it had rubbed into the stick hard carpet fibres. He was about to place a carefully aimed kick between Grace’s legs when Parsol intervened. ‘Stop. Hold them tight, but don’t hurt them, yet,’ he said.

  During the commotion Parsol had manoeuvred himself to the vestry door that opened into the little corridor. He was carefully positioned, half in and half out of the doorway, just in case a retreat had been called for. Now it was clear his men had things under control he could exploit this interruption.

  With a quick and rueful glance at his bloodied handkerchief, Cassiter stuffed it beside his phone in the pocket of his forensic suit. Then he joined Parsol at the doorway. ‘We’ve got ten minutes at most before the police arrive and we become trapped. We must get what we need now,’ said Cassiter.

  Parsol nodded. ‘Let’s carry on with the old woman; you were doing such a good job before we were interrupted. If she won’t tell us herself I think the ladies will want to give us what we need to know very quickly,’ he said, allowing a little smile to spread around his mouth. Then he spoke to his bodyguards. ‘You two, turn them around so they can see the old woman’s suffering. Get them in close. I want them to feel her pain.’

  The bodyguards responded at once. Grace, still in the vice-like headlock, found herself turned to face her mother. The other bodyguard, carrying a now unresisting Helen still locked under his arm, moved to stand beside his colleague. Confidently he released her right arm, which she allowed to drop down towards the floor. She did not cry out when the guard used his now free hand to take a strong grip of her hair, jerking her head up so she looked directly at Elaine.

  Cassiter stepped away from the door and once again crouched beside Elaine. He smiled up at the two younger women. ‘Well ladies, ready for a show? We’re in a bit of a hurry now so I’ll have to push on. Just tell us where the dagger is and it will all be over. Simple. The ball’s in your court, ladies,’ and as he spoke Cassiter reached out and took Elaine’s broken finger and twisted it a little as he smiled serenely at Grace. Elaine’s scream filled the room but Grace could respond only with a futile, anger driven struggle.

  Helen’s captor was enjoying the spectacle and pleased he had the easier girl to control; he relaxed a little to take in the show. He could see that after the little refresher tweak, Cassiter had now abandoned the broken finger and taken the woman’s second finger in his hand. A firm and unrelenting pressure was now bending it out of line, it would break at any moment and the guard was watching carefully; this time he wanted to see the woman’s face just at the moment it snapped.

  Helen was ready. She thought for a moment of her darkest days in Africa. When you strike, strike to win. The tips of the fingers on her left hand were curled in tight to make a blunt faced wedge. She twisted her whole body half a turn from the waist so she was looking up into her captor’s face, not even registering the pain as her hair came out in his hand. For a fraction of a second he was surprised at how agile she was and how his grip on her hair had suddenly gone. The initial surprise was replaced by shock as Helen continued the momentum of her body twist, swinging her left arm up from below and thrusting her wedge shaped hand up hard into his throat, pushing his Adam’s apple back deep into his neck, crushing into his windpipe.

  The guard dropped with a gasp and
a whimper, clutching his throat and thrashing his legs in an unsuccessful search for relief. The second guard was only just registering that his partner was down as Helen scrabbled up to her knees and punched him hard in the groin: once, twice, he had no defence while still holding Grace, three and out. In just a moment, Grace was free and her captor lay on the ground writhing. She gave him a kick as she moved to join Helen who was closing on Cassiter.

  They all froze in response to two shots Parsol fired into the ceiling. ‘Stay still. Move and you’re dead,’ said Parsol, from his position at the door. He pointed the pistol towards Helen and Grace.

  Cassiter rose, grinning. ‘Nice try ladies, but not up to the mark I’m afraid,’ he said, then paused to listen. The sound of a distant siren wormed its way through the vestry window; he turned to Parsol, ‘Police. We have to go.’

  Parsol nodded agreement. ‘Yes, but we have too many loose ends here. We must tidy things first.’ He waved the muzzle of his pistol towards his men who lay completely disabled on the ground, ‘Can they move?’

  Cassiter stooped to check them, then shaking his head he glanced back at Parsol, ‘Not in the time we’ve got.’

  Parsol nodded an acknowledgement. ‘Well they’ll have to stay too,’ he said, turning his pistol on the guard with the damaged windpipe. In an excellent demonstration of marksmanship, he stretched out the pistol, gripping it carefully with both hands and shot the man in the head twice, dead. He trained the gun on the second guard. Both hands, a steady stare down the barrel, he could see the guard, one hand grasping his groin in nature’s response to the blows received, the other outstretched towards Parsol. A futile barrier raised by a defenceless man, able to comprehend what was about to happen but powerless to respond. He looked up at the pistol in fear, then suddenly averted his gaze, dropped his hand, resigned. Two shots and he was dead. This did impress Cassiter and he made a mental note of Parsol’s shooting ability.