by P. W. Child
“You and me both,” said Sam, visibly flustered. Putting on his business face, he asked, “Any idea what happened to Purdue?”
She shook her head. “No. But he’s probably alright. I hope he is, anyway… If he wasn’t, we’d probably be dead by now. Come on, let’s get away from this place.”
“Where are we going? They said they’d given you the instructions.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got no idea where we are. I just want to be somewhere else,” Nina beckoned.
“Then let’s just make a note of where we are before we go. They let me have this back.” He pulled out his notebook and waved it at her. “What street are we on? I’ll just quickly – oh, hang on, this isn’t mine. Is that your writing?”
Nina took the book and recognized her own spiky script. “It is. I didn’t think I’d be getting this back! Have you got a pen? Thanks.” She scribbled down the street address and a brief description of the whitewashed Godshuizen in case they needed to use it as a landmark. Then they set off along the street, picking a direction at random, and kept walking until the Black Sun house was some distance behind them.
*
They had not gone far before they realized how short a distance the Black Sun house was from the Minnewaterpark. It only took a few minutes for them to find themselves within sight of the spires of Saint Salvator’s Cathedral. They kept going until they were on the other side of the Market Square, the Belfry behind them, and found a tiny cellar bar where they could stop and look at the contents of the envelope Nina had been given. Sam left her securing the table nearest the fire while he went to get two of the cheapest things they served. He had also been given a small amount of cash, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it would be much less than they would need and that they had best conserve it.
When he returned, they huddled by the grate and bent their heads over the series of small, thick cards that they had found inside the envelope. One card showed the co-ordinates. Another featured a floor plan of a building, presumably the place they would reach if they followed the co-ordinates. Finally, one of them simply read In the event of successful acquisition, deliver the artefact in the name of Maria de Beck to the Savoy Hotel. See that it is stored in the Gaunt Box.
“So whatever this thing is, they trust us to go and get it but not to bring it back?” Sam took a deep gulp of his beer. “They’re a weird lot.”
“They certainly are,” said Nina. “And I don’t know if trust is the right word. Look at these.” She tipped up the envelope and held out her palm so that Sam could see the two capsules that she had found.
“Shit.” Sam picked up a capsule and held it gingerly between his forefinger and thumb. It was a clear, gelatinous casing filled with milky white powder. “I’m not much of a gambling man, but I’d be prepared to bet that these aren’t Day Nurse.”
“As considerate as it would be of them to send us out into this weather armed with pseudoephedrine, I’d second your bet,” Nina said. “At least we know what they expect us to do if this all goes wrong. Or if we change our minds, presumably.”
“Good to know we’ve got options, I suppose. Better keep them somewhere safe.” He unzipped the internal pocket in his jacket and ran a finger round the lining, checking for holes. Finding none, he tucked it carefully into the corner.
“We’ll need to find a library or an internet café or something so that we can find out where these co-ordinates take us to.” Nina slipped her own capsule back into the envelope alongside the cards. “Judging by the fact that we’re supposed to take the object to the Savoy Hotel once we find it, my guess would be that we’re heading for the UK – but I’d like to check that there aren’t any others by that name that might be possibilities. How much money did they give you? I’ve got a hundred Euro.”
Sam took out the slim roll of notes and unwrapped them. “Fifty Euro, less five for the drinks so forty-five, and fifty pounds Sterling. Not a lot. Certainly not enough to get even one of us back to the UK. Looks like we’re going to have to get creative. Internet café first, then you can let me know whether you’d prefer to stow away on a plane, a train or a car.”
“Oh, please,” Nina waved a hand with an air of affected nonchalance. “Who stows away in cars? We usually just steal them, don’t we?” They laughed, but their hearts were not in it. Nina sank back in the hard wooden seat and mumbled into the last of her beer “Train, then. I had my fill of driving after the last few times.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Seriously? He’s honestly telling us there are no internet cafes in the whole of Bruges?” Nina stamped down the steps from the Tourist Information. “How is that even possible?”
“Well, none that that guy knows about, anyway,” said Sam. “We’re just a couple of years too late, by the looks of it. Everyone expects that you’ll just use your phone these days. It’s a shame that he wouldn’t let us use his, though.”
“Mmm. And of course the bloody libraries are closed today. Did you catch what he was saying about that? Some kind of holiday? Not that it matters why, the point is that they’re not an option and I am not spending another night just wandering around Bruges. I’ve done that once in my life and that was enough.”
Sam nodded. “Fair enough. I’m not sure the Order would take too kindly to us hanging around all night anyway. It would be better to be on the move.”
They stood there, at an impasse, both trying to figure out what to do. There were fewer tourists in the square that day, put off or driven indoors by the damp weather, but it was still a busy corner. A young American, walking backwards across the cobblestones as he stared at his smartphone screen, trying to fit the full height of the belfry into the picture. He slammed straight into Sam, then apologized and went on his way. As Sam watched him go he noticed a handful of other tourists doing similar things, umbrellas in one hand to shelter their technology and very little regard for spatial awareness.
“Let’s get a coffee,” said Sam.
“What? We’re not long out of the pub, why are we having coffee now? We’ve got to figure this out, Sam.”
“Trust me.” Sam led her across to the busiest of the café-bars, full of damp people hiding from the elements. They walked up to the bar, past a couple of empty tables.
“You don’t want to sit down?” Nina asked. “I’m sure it’s table service, look -”
“No, its fine, you’ll need to see what you want first – look, they’ve got a really good selection of beers and the like. Step up on the rail there, then you’ll be able to see.” Ignoring her confusion, Sam put a hand on her back and pushed her forward until she did as he said and stepped up to peer over the counter. He appeared to know what he wanted. He leaned nonchalantly on the bar while he waited for her.
Nina barely noticed what was on the refrigerated shelves. Her mind was too busy trying to make sense of Sam’s behavior. ‘Is he planning to ask the café owners if they’ve got a computer he can use?’ She wondered. ‘Or is he genuinely just being really weird?’
“Don’t see anything you fancy?” Sam asked brightly. “Well then! Let’s try somewhere else.” He grabbed her arm and marshalled her briskly towards the door. “How about that place we went to yesterday, would you rather go back there? Or we could try that place we walked past on the way here…”
As soon as they were out, Sam stopped talking. He did not release her arm, though. He steered her down the first side street they came to, then came to a halt.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Nina was completely confused.
With a triumphant, mischievous look on his face, Sam held up his right hand. Hidden in his palm, half pushed up into his sleeve, was someone’s iPhone. Swiftly he took it out and swiped across the screen. “You wee beauty,” he sighed happily. “I was hoping it wouldn’t have locked again yet. I got it just after the guy put it in his pocket, he’d only just stopped looking at it. Thank God for delays on phone locks!”
“You nicked someone’s phone? Just like that?
” she asked.
For a second Sam wondered if she would disapprove, but when he looked at her he saw that her expression was only quizzical.
“Miss-spent youth,” Sam explained. “Had to be good for something. You knew about that, you’ve seen me shoplift before.”
She snorted. “Anyone can shoplift. Nabbing things from people’s pockets is far more skillful!”
“Well, if I ever get caught I’ll get you to argue with the judge that it should be respected as an art form. Right… I don’t know what I’m doing with these things. Where’s Google? Here. Right. Got it. Have you got those co-ordinates there, Nina?”
She handed him the card with the co-ordinates written on it. With great care he tapped them into the phone, waited for the result, then looked suspiciously at the device and tried again. For the second time, the map showed him the same answer. He showed it to Nina. She had her notebook poised, ready to write down their destination.
“Wow” she commented as she scribbled. “Peter Street. This is going to be a challenge. There’s nothing in that area that isn’t at least moderately posh and well-secured. It’s not where I’d have chosen to embark on a life of theft, not at all. I suppose we should just be grateful that it’s one of the buildings across the road and not the British Museum itself that we’re going to have to get into.”
“I don’t know,” said Sam, “that would probably be easier. Have you got the full address? Right. Wait there. I’m going to go and hand the phone in back at the bar. We might be about to nick somebody’s precious objet d’art, but that doesn’t mean we have to ruin someone’s holiday.”
*
Stowing away on the train from Bruges to Brussels proved to be remarkably easy. There were no ticket barriers at either station, only an on-board inspector whom they were able to play cat and mouse with for the duration of the journey.
“I haven’t done this since I was about fifteen,” Nina whispered as they hid in the toilet to let the inspector go past. The cubicle was small and cramped and the proximity was awkward. In an attempt to distract herself from the confined space and the temptation presented by their bodies being pressed up against each other, Nina kept babbling.
“We used to go down to Glasgow, this little gang of kids from my school, and we’d always end up spending all our money on cheap booze and not having enough for the train home. We’d catch the last train back to Oban and hope nobody bothered to get on to check tickets. Or we’d stay over in Glasgow and then have to dodge the inspectors in the morning when we were hungover, which was worse.”
Getting themselves aboard the Eurostar at Bruxelles-Midi was a trickier prospect. Not only were there ticket barriers to pass, there was a security checkpoint where they would be required to show their passports – and their passports would need to match the names on their tickets.
“This is going to be impossible,” Nina muttered. “We might have an easier time trying to stow away, though I’ve no idea how we’d go about it.”
Sam clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Such a defeatist, Nina! There’s always a way. Look.” He nodded in the direction of a slim, dark-haired woman who was standing in front of the departures board checking a Eurostar ticket.
“You’ve got to be joking.” Nina’s eyes widened. “What, drag her down a dark alley, clock her over the head and emerge wearing her clothes and waving her passport? That’s insane.”
“Have you got a better idea?”
“She doesn’t even look that much like me!”
“So? Who looks like their passport photo? She’s a woman with a similar haircut and face shape. I’ll bet you anything that’s as far as they’ll look. And it’s not going to be difficult to find a man whose passport photo looks a wee bit like me. So what’s it to be? Find a dark alleyway somewhere in the train station, or shall we go for the easier option and steal their tickets and passports?”
Nina sighed. “Get their wallets too,” she said. “We don’t want them being able to prove their identities too quickly when they report their passports missing.”
“I will,” he nodded. “This time I think we’re just going to have to commit ourselves to ruining someone’s holiday.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Peter Street proved to be an odd jumble of a street. High-end designer boutiques and dealers selling expensive abstract prints nestled cheek by jowl with tourist tat shops flogging plastic Beefeaters and die cast red buses. A typically English pub with a horseshoe bar and a portrait of the Queen on the wall stood opposite a restaurant offering ‘experimental molecular gastronomy’. At one end of the street the epic grandeur of the British Museum was visible, and at the other end the only view was of a Brutalist office block in need of a good clean.
Although most of the properties on Peter Street had been divided up into flats and commercial units, a few of the buildings remained intact. Number 34, the house they had been sent to find, was one of these. Built as a chic town residence some time in the early 19th century, it bore a considerable resemblance to the frequently-rebuilt Black Sun house.
Sam and Nina stopped at the dilapidated newsagent on the corner and bought sandwiches to eat while they studied the floor plan on the second card. “Our luck seems to be taking a turn for the better,” said Sam. “We’re here. It’s not raining. We got the last two BLTs in the shop, there’s a bench to sit on and you’ve still got a few cigarettes left in that packet. Here’s my lighter. You smoke one of your ones and I’ll bum one off someone outside the pub, the packet’ll go further that way.”
They tore into their sandwiches ravenously, demolishing them almost instantly. “Do you find it weird,” Nina asked, “being back in London? I know I do. Steven had a favorite restaurant somewhere around here. Some overly fancy tapas place.”
“Being at King’s Cross was weird,” Sam replied. “This… not so much. I was hardly ever around here. Mostly I was out in East London or around Farringdon where The Clarion was based. Central London’s never really been my cup of tea. Too many people.”
Nina nodded. “Yup. I know what you mean. Looks like that might be our problem tonight as well.” She waved her sandwich expansively at Peter Street, taking in the fading daylight and passers-by. The restaurant and pub were beginning to fill up, and even though it was after closing time at the Museum there were still plenty of people using the street as a through route. “How are we going to do this without anyone noticing? It’s not like we can just take a crowbar to the door. There’s a window that’s slightly open, but we’re not getting up there without getting ourselves arrested.”
Peter Street led onto a number of side streets, one of which led to what had once been an alley before extensions to the ground floor had blocked it. It had been a small, narrow alleyway, and the rear windows of the upper floor looked out over it.
The idea hit them both at the same time. They looked around, checking that the side street was still quiet, then Sam reached down and lifted Nina up so that she could climb onto the roof of the extension. He scrambled up after her. They crossed the roof and dropped down the other side, back down to street level.
“This looks good,” Nina said, pointing to a small cellar window by her feet. She got down on her knees. “It looks like a utility room. I think I can get in here. I’m not sure you can, but maybe I can get round to the front door and let you in that way. Can we muffle the noise? Someone’s going to hear us if we break the glass.”
Sam looked around for anything that would deaden the noise. A damp newspaper lay half-submerged in a puddle nearby. “Try this,” he said. “Oh – and this.” One of the neighboring houses had recently had its windows repainted and a small tin of paint had been forgotten beneath the sill. “Use the paint to stick the paper to the glass. That way the shards should stay on the paper when it breaks, or most of it will, at least.”
She did as he suggested, smearing the window with pure white paint before applying a layer of newspaper. Then she picked up a small stone and began to tap on the gl
ass. Fortunately, the old building had only single glazing, and the glass surrendered swiftly to the impact and adhered to the paint and paper. Only a small amount found its way to the floor, not enough to cause the kind of commotion that Nina had feared. Once the frame was clear Sam helped to lower her through, then climbed back over the extension and went round to the front of the house again.
A couple of minutes later, Nina opened the door and waved Sam inside. “You need to see this place,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful!”
Even the vestibule was well-proportioned and elegantly decorated. It was the kind of exquisitely rich property that had always made Sam wish that he felt more at home in fancy places. They crept up the thickly carpeted stairs to the first floor, where they found a landing with a number of doors.
“Let’s start with the open ones,” Sam whispered, “and hope we’ll know what we’re looking for when we see it.”
Nina stretched out a hand and tentatively pushed open the first door they came to. “Our luck’s in, Sam,” she said softly. “I think we just did.”
The room was not unusually large, but its high ceilings and pristine whiteness made it feel vast. The polished wooden floor sent every footstep echoing all around. On each wall hung a framed painting, their colors vibrant even in the dingy orange glow from the traffic lights filtered through the sheer curtains.
“Which one are we meant to take?” Sam looked helplessly from one painting to the next, suddenly gripped by fear that they would fail after having come so far. “Is there anything on those cards to give us a clue?”
“No,” Nina shook her head emphatically. She was staring intently at the artwork in front of her, a tondo depicting the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. “This is the test. It’s a riddle of sorts. We have to prove our worth by picking the right one. I think I’m starting to see how Renata thinks… Whatever we’re looking for, it’s going to have some significance concerning -”