Black Hearts Rising (Wardens of the Black Heart Book 2)

by Rob Campbell

  “What does bequest mean?”

  “Bequest?” It took a few more seconds for my addled brain to kick into gear. Monkey was standing next to the open top drawer of the third filing cabinet. “I think it’s like when somebody gives you something.”

  “Like a present?”

  “No, more like when it’s all official or legal. Like in a will.”

  “So, we’d be interested in Abram’s bequest?” he said with a hint of triumph, holding up a document.

  I bolted over to the cabinet, taking the document out of his hands. My eyes quickly scanned the handwriting. It looked more recent than most of what we’d been rifling through, the ink showing less sign of having faded.

  “Abram’s bequest,” I repeated. “Sold on the seventeenth of February 1968!” I read some more of the document, my excitement growing. “It says that the church received over nine hundred pounds for the painting!” I tried to perform a rough calculation, remembering what my economics teacher had said about inflation. “That must have been…” My excitement didn’t help with my thought patterns. “That must have been a lot of money back then,” I settled on.

  “Look at the note at the bottom,” Monkey prompted.

  “Sold to cover expenses incurred in repairing the church roof and spire after the great winter storms,” I read aloud.

  “You were right, Lorna. They sold the painting because they needed to raise money fast!”

  “But who would pay that kind of money for a painting by a relatively unknown artist?” I asked.

  Monkey tapped the bottom corner of the page.

  “The Art of Life. That’s…” I said.

  “The antique dealer in town,” Monkey completed.

  I knew the place, and what’s more, we’d met the current proprietor only recently. Gerald May had been at the lecture given by Henry Bannister-Reeves.

  We put the remaining documents back in the filing cabinet as carefully as we could. Hopefully, the vicar would think that we hadn’t created too much of a mess, but if he said anything, I had a ready-made comeback along the lines of the messiest filing system I’d ever encountered. The truth was that we were more concerned with making it to The Art of Life before the shop closed for the weekend.

  * * *

  We pushed through the front door just before five, the little bell above the door tinkling in that way that seems unique to small town shops.

  Gerald May, looking like a bundle of sticks dressed in a tweed jacket, glanced up from where he stood behind the counter, a surprised expression on his face that suggested we weren’t his normal clientele. “Can I help you?”

  “Do you remember us from the Henry Bannister-Reeves lecture”? I asked.

  “I thought I recognised you,” Gerald May said with a smile. “Fascinating man, Henry Bannister-Reeves. Seems to know a lot about, well, everything really,” he laughed.

  “Mr May, I’m doing a project at college, and I need help locating a work by Josiah Abram.”

  “Well, you’re in luck, miss. There are two hanging in The Lamb and Shepherd, not five minutes from here!” If he was disappointed that we’d not come to buy anything from his shop, he hid it well.

  “I know about those. I was talking about another, more valuable piece.” I looked around his small shop. There was all manner of wooden furniture, a grandfather clock, several items of porcelain standing in a display case and no shortage of memorabilia in several forms: medals, coins, pewter tankards and the like. The proprietor caught my gaze and started to chuckle.

  “Oh, I see. You don’t think you’ll find anything here, do you?” He removed his glasses and wiped a stream of water from the corner of his eye.

  “No, nothing like that. It’s information I’m after really.”

  “Information? Sounds intriguing!”

  “Do you mind me asking how long you’ve owned this shop?” I had to start somewhere, but I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to work my way through a list of former owners, getting Anja involved and having to go through various business accounts.

  “Since 1975…”

  Nineteen seventy-five! Seven years after Abram’s painting was sold. My heart sank.

  “But it’s been a family business since the thirties. My father ran it before me.”

  “Your Dad was here in 1968?” Monkey said excitedly.

  “Nineteen sixty-eight, you say. Yes, I remember it well. That was the year of the great storm.” Gerald May adopted a far-off look like he was recalling the events of that year with great clarity. “Did a fair amount of damage to some of the buildings around here.”

  “You remember the storm?” I asked.

  “I was only a young lad back then, but things like violent storms, crashing trees and the like tend to stay with you a lifetime. Especially when your grandfather dies as a result.”

  “Your grandfather?” I was worried that my innocent line of questioning had reminded the antique dealer of painful memories.

  “He was blown over on the side of the road one night. Broke his arm and had to be taken to hospital. He got an infection and never recovered.”

  “I’m sorry, I…”

  “It was a long time ago, and he was already an old man by then,” Gerald May said with a wistful smile. “My father always told me that Grandad had lived a full life and made plenty of money too. I think Dad felt guilty that he’d inherited so much money at a relatively young age.”

  So, Gerald May’s father had been a rich man? Maybe that explained why he was able to pay such a handsome sum for a painting.

  “Was your father a religious man, Mr May?”

  “He was. Never missed church on a Sunday and was always involved in church fairs, dances and the like.”

  Mr May senior was a religious man with plenty of money – the pieces were beginning to fit now. Such a man might not baulk at paying over the odds for a painting if it were to benefit the church.

  “You don’t remember your father buying a painting off the church in that year, do you?”

  “Oh, I was much too young to remember something like that. I wasn’t interested in antiques until my late teens.”

  I tried to suppress a smirk, and when I glanced at Monkey, I could see that he was similarly struggling. Gerald May came across as the typical upstanding old man, and if he was developing a taste for antiques in the prime of his youth, I wondered whether he’d skipped being a young or middle-aged man entirely.

  “But my father was a fastidious record keeper. Is this something to do with your project?”

  “It is, but not only that. I have reason to believe that your father bought one of Josiah Abram’s paintings from the church.”

  The look on Gerald May’s face was priceless. “An Abram, here in this shop? I say…”

  “Could we have a look at your records?”

  “I’m afraid that I don’t keep them here at the shop,” the antique dealer chuckled. “Far too valuable. I keep them in a safe place at home – records going back to when my father sold his first watch from these very premises!”

  I thought about questioning who would want to steal the best part of a century of records from a pokey little shop but thought better of it. Instead, I was just relieved that the record of what had happened to Abram’s painting might still be within reach.

  “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll have a look this weekend, then you come back here on Monday, and we’ll discuss my findings.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr May,” I said gratefully.

  “Not at all, it’s nice to see a couple of young people interested in history. And please, call me Gerald.”

  It suddenly felt a long time until Monday.

  Chapter 24

  I tried to put Monday to the back of my mind, and having talked the matter through with Monkey, we’d decided that today was as good a day as any to pay a visit to Goofy Muldoon.

  I was still struggling with the idea of Monkey plucking the document, which seemed to relate to the sale of Abram’s pai
nting, out of all those others stuffed into the top drawer of the filing cabinet. When I’d asked him about it, he’d shrugged his shoulders in the way that he often did, laughing off the incident as pure luck.

  “You seem to be making a habit of that,” I’d commented.

  “What do you mean?”

  I’d reminded him about Lester’s coin that he’d plucked from the stream last year – the incident that had got us into all this intrigue. He didn’t have an answer for that, simply stating the oft-repeated line that he was just in the right place at the right time.

  “You sure you’re not hiding something from me?”

  He shook his head and walked on ahead, kicking a can that lay on the pavement whilst muttering something about fate.

  “Hey,” I shouted, jogging to catch up to him. “You know you’re always telling me that there’s something going on in this town? Something supernatural? You would tell me if you knew something, wouldn’t you?” I couldn’t believe I was asking him this out loud. The chain of events that had led us to work with Lester, run-ins with Charles Gooch, and now the vicar and his unsettling letter, had put a whole new perspective on life in Culverton Beck. Monkey was convinced that there were dark forces afoot. I tried to keep an open mind, but with each event that unfolded in our town, I was forced to confront the possibility that my friend was right.

  “Believe me, Lorna,” Monkey said with a smile, “if I knew something, you’d be the first person I’d tell.”

  I returned his smile – that would have to do for now.

  As we arrived outside a small bungalow at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, I double-checked the address that Goofy’s mum had scribbled on the piece of paper that I now held. Evidently, we had the right place, but the pretty flowers and well-tended lawn spoke of a tranquil home life that was at odds with the image of George ‘Goofy’ Muldoon, the snarling school bully who’d burned Monkey with his cigarette butt.

  As we walked up the path, the front door opened to reveal a smiling Mrs Muldoon. “Thanks for coming,” she beamed. “I told George that I’d seen you, and I was sure you’d drop by at some stage.” She showed us into the living room, where her son lounged in a reclining chair. The last time we’d seen Goofy, he’d been in hospital, practically catatonic, drooling like a dog well past its prime and talking gibberish. He had, however, found time to sketch unsettling stick-man images that bore a loose resemblance to Charles Gooch, and one pencil drawing of a large black heart. To see him now was a shock for different reasons. The hair on his scalp had grown to a respectable length and was neatly combed. The leather jacket and jeans that I associated with him had been replaced by a cardigan, track-suit trousers and a pair of comfy-looking woolly slippers.

  The word makeover didn’t do the transformation justice.

  “Would you like a drink? I’ve just made George one,” Mrs Muldoon said.

  “No thanks,” I replied. Monkey waved away the offer too.

  “I’ll leave you to it then,” she said, retreating from the room.

  Goofy smiled and picked up a large mug from the table next to him.

  “Peppermint tea. Good for the digestion, and the soul,” he said, blowing steam from the top of the cup before taking a sip.

  “You look well, Goo—I mean George,” Monkey offered. “Better than I expected.”

  Goofy smiled, replacing his mug carefully on the table.

  “The doctors are pleased with my progress,” he said softly. “They think that I should make a full recovery.” If we were surprised by his new look, the change in his voice was even more striking. Gone was the snarling bite, replaced by a more cultured tone.

  “What happened in that tunnel?” Monkey asked, almost in a whisper.

  Goofy shook his head slowly. “I can’t remember too much,” he admitted. “Just looking in Gooch’s briefcase and then having a headache. The rest is just a blur really. When I started to feel normal again, they said that I’d been out of it for nearly two months.”

  In my memories, I could still hear Goofy’s unending, piercing scream as Monkey and I had fled from the tunnel under the reservoir that night. We’d kept running until we were well clear and out into the woods, yet behind us, in that terrible place, we could still hear his screaming.

  “And what about before that night? What led us there? What about me?” Monkey pressed, clearly eager to know whether Goofy remembered that he’d threatened to kill Monkey, or at the very least, inflict some serious harm.

  “Nothing really. You are at the same school as me, and this is your girlfriend,” he said, tipping his chin towards me.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Monkey replied, his cheeks flushing.

  We kept the conversation as neutral as possible after that. It was clear that Goofy had no recollection of how he’d tried to force Monkey to hand over Lester’s coin, or how he and his crew had worked with Charles Gooch to try to secure The Frenchman ahead of us. We talked about his school, the weather, football, peppermint tea and a whole host of other things. On the face of it, he appeared like a normal teenager.

  Just not like the Goofy we knew.

  “Well, it was nice seeing you again,” I said as we got up to leave.

  Goofy smiled at us. “Thanks for dropping by.”

  Monkey pulled open the lounge door, stepping into the hall. I made to follow him when Goofy called out to us.

  “Can you deliver a message for me?”

  “You mean a letter?” I said, confused.

  “No, a message. For Charles Gooch.”

  My stomach felt like it had been squeezed by an icy hand.

  “A message for Gooch?”

  “Just tell him that the briefcase is hungry… and that the Bookkeeper will be paying him a visit soon.”

  “Wait, the bookkeeper? What do you mean?” Monkey asked.

  But Goofy had picked up his mug and was busy taking a large slurp of tea. When he put it down, he had a blissful smile on his face. No amount of questioning or cajoling could get him to utter another word. As good an advert for the benefits of herbal tea as you could get.

  What did he mean, the bookkeeper? And how did he expect us to deliver a message to Charles Gooch anyway? The last time I’d seen him was in that tunnel with Goofy. Nobody had seen or heard from him since.

  * * *

  It was shaping up to be an unusual Saturday, with plenty of things going on to distract me from whatever information Gerald May might come back with on Monday.

  Lester had invited us to an impromptu party that night, his text enquiring whether I could invite Victoria along so that the two of them could continue their discussions on art.

  It was blatantly obvious that he just wanted an excuse to see my teacher again, and Monkey and I were just tagging along because, for whatever reason, Lester was too embarrassed to ask her to his house outright. So, in his own bashful way, he was making a big song and dance of the evening. When I emailed Victoria to ask her if she could make it, she was only too keen to renew her acquaintance with the millionaire.

  Once again, Frank picked us all up in the BMW, and we arrived at Rockside just before seven o’clock. After pleasantries were exchanged, we settled down in our groups; Monkey, Frank and I discussed a recent steam engine fair to which he’d taken his brother, Joe, whilst Lester and Victoria discussed the finer points of nineteenth-century oil paintings.

  Later, when nibbles were served, Monkey and Frank were discussing climbing techniques whilst Victoria had sauntered off to view some more paintings in Lester’s gallery on the first floor. It gave me the chance to ask Lester a question that had been bugging me for a while.

  “Do you know a Spanish journalist named Ramón Blanco?”

  “No, why?” he replied, whilst munching on a sausage roll.

  “He’s working with Anja at the Recorder office.” I explained how he’d turned up at the Henry Bannister-Reeves lecture and had hung around afterwards on the pretence of some research that he had to do. “He seems keen to know what
Monkey and I are doing, and he’s mentioned you a couple of times.” I didn’t want to tell Lester that the Spaniard was stirring things up by spreading scurrilous rumours.

  “I don’t recall the name. You say he works for a newspaper in London?”

  “A music magazine.”

  Lester scrunched up his face. “I’ve met a few journalists in my time, but music’s not my kind of thing, so I suppose that’s why I haven’t met him.” He seemed momentarily confused. “What type of music does he write about?”

  “Rock music.”

  “A lecture on Josiah Abram doesn’t sound like it should be his scene. Was he there in a professional capacity?”

  “He said he was only at the lecture because he was filling in for one of his colleagues, who was ill.” Everything Ramón had said up until recently seemed perfectly normal at face value, but with his recent comments about Lester and his unusual interest in Monkey and me, I was beginning to feel defensive whenever he was around. “I didn’t think anything of it at first. He seems to like Anja, and I’d assumed that was why he was hanging around. But now he seems interested in you and me and Monkey—”

  “You wonder whether there’s some more sinister explanation?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Leave it with me. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly, “but I’m glad to see that your time with me has made you a little circumspect.”

  More than he could know.

  Monkey and I were keeping some secrets from Dylan Fogg, and we hadn’t yet broached the subject of Abram’s paintings with Lester, let alone sounded him out with my theory about Abernathy and Abram being one and the same. It was getting to the point where it was difficult to remember what we’d said to who.

  “Thanks, Lester,” I said finally. With his contacts, I felt sure that he’d get to the bottom of whatever Ramón was up to, if anything. Maybe the poor guy did just want to hang around Anja, a bit like Lester and Victoria.

  We joined Frank and Monkey on the comfortable sofas, tucking into the various bits of food and drink on offer. After a while, Lester leaned over conspiratorially.