“We’ll never get away with it,” said Oliver fearfully. “They’ll hunt us down and kill us. Going along with them is the only chance we have of getting out of this alive.”
“You’re speaking in riddles, Oliver, and you know that I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m grateful for your refusal to tell me stuff that might endanger me even more, but I should at least like to understand why you’ve got mixed up with these people.” She glanced again at the engraving on the wall. She was nearer to it now than she had been when she was lying on the bed.
“That’s a picture of Jacob Sparham, isn’t it? Your ancestor? Are we actually in your house?”
Oliver removed his spectacles and passed a weary hand across his face.
“Yes,” he sighed. “I should have realised that you’d recognise the engraving. There’s one like it at the Archaeological Society, isn’t there? Don’t let them know that you’ve found out where you’re being held.”
“I’m sick of hearing about ‘them’,” snapped Alex. “And I know you’re not going to tell me who ‘they’ are. But what about the rest of it? How did you get involved? Does it have something to do with Claudia McRae? Was your visit to her house on the day that she disappeared as casual as you said it was?”
“Yes . . . No. Well, sort of. When I said that I hadn’t seen Claudia for a long time before that visit, I was telling the truth. I actually had been back in touch with her again a few years ago, but only by e-mail. That companion of hers – Jane or Jean – got hold of me to ask me to contribute to a collection of occasional papers that she is planning to publish to accompany a new book by Claudia. She told me that this book would be the culmination of Claudia’s life’s work. I was a bit sceptical – Claudia was never any great shakes at writing – but I agreed to do it.”
“How did this woman find you?”
“I don’t suppose I’m that difficult to find. But it’s interesting that you ask, because this Jane – I think her name was Jane – was quite coy when I asked her the same question myself. She’d reached me through Edmund Baker – he’d supplied her with my e-mail address. Reading between the lines, I had the impression that there was something going on between her and Edmund at the time.”
“Really? That’s incredible!” Alex’s voice was high with shock. Her face paled, then flushed scarlet.
“Please keep your voice down!” said Oliver, panicky again. “It’s not that incredible. Do you know something that I don’t?” he added, regarding Alex more closely.
“No. No, of course not. Do carry on.”
Oliver was suddenly hesitant.
“How much do you know about Claudia and her work?” he asked.
“I read some of her writings when I was a student. I know about the McRae Stone, of course.”
“What did you think of her theory about that?”
“You mean the political gloss that she put on it? About one of the languages belonging to an early super-race? I can’t say that I thought about it very much at all. I was much more interested in what she said about the actual languages – their structure and the etymology of the words. If I had any opinion, it was that the theoretical stuff was pretty far-fetched. Surely you didn’t swallow it?” she added, as Oliver’s expression changed.
“I think that it’s all nonsense now. When I was a young man I was more impressionable. Naïve, I suppose you’d say. The fact is, Claudia belonged to some extremely right-wing political groups and she encouraged the young archaeologists who went on her digs to join them. I was quite under her spell in those days and I didn’t think twice about it. It was only later that I realised how unpleasant these organisations were. Some of them were illegal, in fact.”
“I’m surprised. I’d never have guessed that you were a . . . er . . .”
“Fascist, you mean? Well, it’s there in my history.” Oliver gestured towards the portrait of Jacob Sparham. “And in my genes, too, I guess. Jacob took Darwin’s writings and twisted them to demonstrate that the world order of which he approved was both natural and inevitable. No claim for originality there – poor old Darwin has had social divisiveness laid at his door ever since he published the Origin of Species. But what I knew about Jacob fascinated me as a young man, so I suppose that when Claudia sounded me out I was quite receptive to her ideas. As a matter of fact, I rejected all that years ago, both emotionally and intellectually. I saw the light when I understood that it had contributed to the failure of my marriage. It didn’t reject me, however. There was one extremist group in particular that Claudia had encouraged me to join. Once you’ve become a member of it, you’ve sworn lifelong allegiance. I wasn’t an active member after I was about thirty-five, but I knew that it could – probably would – call on me again. And the call came.”
“But you said that this Jane person contacted you through Edmund. Was he one of that group, too? He’s always struck me as being quite left wing.”
“I would agree with you. Edmund certainly wasn’t interested in committing himself to any of Claudia’s wider activities when we were students. He made it clear that he wanted to confine his association with her to the digs. I still think that he is involved with them in some way, though. I haven’t quite figured out how. I suspect that it may also have something to do with Jacob Sparham.”
“I’m not sure that I follow.”
“Jacob was a wealthy man. He was an amateur antiquarian who travelled extensively. He brought back all sorts of artefacts from his travels; you will have seen some of them at the Archaeological Society, or at least the records of them, because I think that most of them have been archived. He left to the Society most of his professional papers and the artefacts that he hadn’t already donated to museums. A lot of it was junk, the sort of stuff that a tourist might bring back from Egypt these days – fake Pharaonic pottery scarabs and so on. The souvenir industry was booming even then. But there was one thing that Jacob described in his journals that was apparently of great intrinsic value. He was quite enigmatic about what he did with it. It wasn’t among the things that he left to the Archaeological Society in his will and I and other family members have been unable to find it, despite scouring this house and others many times over the years. Edmund was very interested in it indeed; you could say, obsessed. He asked me about it several times and he definitely thought that he was on the trail of it. I didn’t believe that he could be, because we had been so thorough in our searches.”
“What was it?”
“A swastika that Jacob acquired in Albania. It was made of red gold and said to be encrusted with blue diamonds.”
“Did Edmund give you any idea why he thought he’d found a new lead?”
“Well, obviously, he hoped he’d get to the swastika before I did – or them. As you can imagine, they have designs on it, not only because of its value but because of what it represents. But he did drop some hints. Jacob had been engaged for a while to a woman from a fairly well-to-do local family. The engagement was eventually broken off, but Edmund seemed to think that either he gave this woman the swastika or told her where he had hidden it.”
“It all makes perfect sense now . . .” Alex realised that she was voicing her thoughts aloud.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Nothing of importance, that is. Jacob’s fiancée – was her name . . . ?”
Oliver cocked his head.
“Shhh,” he said. “Did you hear that? Someone’s coming. I’m going to have to tie you up again. Now!”
His tone of voice made Alex sick with terror again.
“Get on the bed! Quickly!”
This is not really happening, she told herself, as she lay down docilely on the bed and allowed Oliver to apply fresh plastic ties and sticking plaster. She no longer had time for Jacob Sparham, Claudia McRae or even Oliver himself, or their weird political views and unpleasant ways of celebrating them. She wante
d to think only of Tom . . . and of being released.
Before Oliver had retied the blindfold, she felt light penetrate the curtains briefly and disappear. The next minute heavy footsteps could be heard pounding along the corridor.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The Herrick children’s home was a Victorian mansion that had been built on the site of the original Herrick House, a fortified manor that had been the seat of the Herrick family when they had been minor mediaeval gentry. This ancestral building had been retained for service as a dower-house after the first Lord Herrick was ennobled and made great by Elizabeth I. Now too rich a man to inhabit a humble manor-house, he had built the opulent Herrick Great House that his descendants still occupied on the lands at Stamford, newly bestowed on him by the queen; but he had been too sentimental about the old family home to abandon it completely. Always in use as a dower-house, it had survived into the first half of the nineteenth century, when a shortage of suitable widows had caused it to fall into a state of dereliction beyond repair. The Lord Herrick of the day had ordered its partial demolition and built a workhouse on the site, thus beginning a tradition of conservative philanthropy that still persisted in the Herrick family.
The building that was now being silently surrounded by police had therefore been constructed with security in mind – the workhouse had been designed to be a semi-prison – on a piece of land whose original fortifications were still in place. It rose up baldly from its man-made mound and was encircled by cast iron railings. These in turn were surrounded by a moat which, although dry and grown shallower with the passing of time, still offered protection to the house. Under the direction of Andy Carstairs, officers were stationing themselves at intervals in the scrubby land around it.
The tall iron gates had been closed and possibly also locked. The house was in darkness, though occasionally lights could be seen flickering deep inside the building, as if people were moving through it by torchlight. Andy himself was concealed behind a solitary oak tree that grew close to the approach road so that he would be able to see advancing vehicles. DC MacFadyen came ducking through the bushes to talk to him.
“There are several vehicles in the compound at the rear of the house,” he said. “One of them is Guy Maichment’s Land Rover. And there is a large white van.”
“Is the compound inside the railings?”
“Yes. And the gates may well be locked, though I didn’t get close enough to try them. It’s difficult to guess how many of them are there, or in which part of the house; or where the children and their carers are, either. There must be quite a few of them if they can overpower those kids. Some of them can hold their own in a rough-house, believe me.”
“They wouldn’t give much trouble if the gang’s armed. Even the most reckless kids won’t want to argue if they’re on the wrong side of a gun.”
“We don’t know for sure that they are armed, do we?”
“No, but there’s a fair chance, if this is something to do with the drugs ring. The body that we found at Ayscoughfee had been shot.”
“It would help if we had some idea of the lay-out of the house. Do you think we could get hold of social services in Spalding and ask whether they have a floor-plan? It might show us where they’re likely to be holding the kids.”
“There won’t be time. When the response unit gets here, I think we’re going to have to go in. But I’ve just remembered that Gary Cooper came and stayed the night here with that boy who was caught couriering drugs. He must have seen some of the inside of the house. I sent him to Holbeach to try to bring Edmund Baker in, but Baker wasn’t there, so I told Cooper to get himself back over here. Do you know if he’s got here yet?”
“I’ll find out.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
By the time the two men entered the room, Alex was lying on the bed, handcuffed, foot-cuffed, blindfolded and gagged. Oliver had stayed with her.
“What are you doing in here?” said a rough voice. She recognised that it belonged to the man who had sat in the back of the van with her. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier instruction to Oliver not to speak in Alex’s presence.
“I’d just come in to make sure that she hadn’t tried anything. You told me to check on her every hour.”
“Well, it can’t have taken you very long. She’s still just lying there. Didn’t think she had much spirit. I’m surprised she hasn’t asked to piss.”
“Should I ask her if she’d like to use the bathroom now?”
“Nah. Just leave her. She can piss on the bed if necessary. You won’t mind about that, will you?”
“I – no. Not for the sake of the bed. I’d prefer not to have to compromise her dignity, though.”
“Listen, Mr Professor, she’s got a lot more to worry about than her dignity, believe me.”
“What’s the matter?” Oliver was trying to sound casual, but Alex could hear the catch in his voice. “Aren’t things going according to plan?”
“Not sure that I should tell you. I never believed that you were on our side. But if you must know, we’ve been held up. We can’t find it. And now someone has alerted the cops.” There was insinuation in the rough voice now, as well as menace.
“Well, I assure you that it wasn’t me. I’ve been here all the time. Since you’ve cut off the phone and taken my mobile, that should be enough proof for you that I haven’t contacted anyone. As if I would, anyway,” Oliver finished lamely.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want you to stay in here with her now that we’re back. Get yourself downstairs, will you? Jared can wait outside the door here. You can make us some tea if you haven’t got anything better to do.”
Alex heard the door close. At first, she found it difficult to guess whether they had all left the room. After five minutes or so of complete silence, she divined that she was on her own once again. At intervals, she could hear someone shuffling about in the corridor beyond. She guessed that that was Jared. Without being certain, she felt, from his fidgety, unpredictable and brutish manner, that he was the one who had overpowered and trussed her in the van, whereas the driver had given the impression of being, if ruthless and unstoppable, intelligent and perfectly at ease with himself.
“Rubbish,” she thought, as she dozed off into merciful sleep again. “They’re all crooks, all amoral. They don’t have any finer qualities. None of them. Even Oliver, despite his punctilious concern. Like all of them, he’s really just out to serve his own ends.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Tim Yates drove to Sleaford as fast as he could. He parked his car out of sight of Herrick Old House and was walking cautiously towards it when the semi-armoured vehicles carrying the response team pulled on to the verge behind him, hidden from the house by a tall laurel hedge.
Tim reached Andy Carstairs. “Do we know anything about who’s inside? Or how many of them there are? Has anyone been seen? What about the children?”
“We’ve haven’t seen anyone properly. There have been lights moving around in the building at intervals, front and back, and we’ve seen a few shadows. We think that Guy Maichment is in there, because his Land Rover is parked in the compound. We don’t have any other names. There is a large white van in the compound as well, but it’s showing false plates.”
“No-one inside the house has tried to make contact?”
“No.”
A short, wiry man joined them.
“DI Yates? I’m Sergeant Jubb.”
He was not the big-boned commando type that Tim had been expecting. He spoke with a strong Lincolnshire accent.
“Do you know the names of any of the hostage-takers?” he asked.
“Only one. We think that their leader is someone called Guy Maichment.”
“Do you know him?”
“I’ve interviewed him a couple of times, but not as a suspect. He is the nephew of Claudia McRae, the archaeologist who disappear
ed a few weeks ago.”
“Has anyone tried to talk to him?”
“No. The officers we’ve brought here were told to make no contact until you arrived.”
Sergeant Jubb nodded.
“How many officers do you have deployed here?”
Tim looked at Andy.
“About twenty,” said Andy. “Some from our force, some from Peterborough. The North Lincs police are checking the roads and doing some other local searches,” he added, for Tim’s benefit.
Sergeant Jubb regarded Tim with keen blue eyes.
“Are you used to dealing with hostage-takers?” he asked. “I don’t mean the psychological stuff. I don’t have much time for that. Have you tried negotiating with any? Spoken to them through a megaphone?”
“No,” said Tim reluctantly. He knew that he was going to have to make a rapid decision here and that whether the children were rescued could depend on the accuracy of his judgment. He took in the slight, sinewy figure standing in front of him. Sergeant Jubb was a policeman, but he could have been a soldier. Tim guessed that although he was not a rash or impulsive man, he was probably not someone who would have the patience to spend much time ‘negotiating’. He would want to take the soldier’s route to a swift and efficient outcome. In short, he was a legitimate killing machine.
“We’ll have to assume they are aware of our presence. Do you want me to try talking to this Maichment? I’ve done this sort of thing before.”
Tim hesitated.
“It’s good of you, but I think I’d like to have a stab at it myself first. He’s quite a complicated character and I have some idea of how he thinks. If I don’t get anywhere, I’ll ask you to take over.”
Sergeant Jubb shrugged.
“Whatever you think is best. I wouldn’t make too much of a meal of it, though. If we hang about too long, they’ll think of ways of regrouping to make our job more difficult. And don’t forget about those kids. We don’t know what’s happening to them while we’re chewing the fat, do we?”
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