Blue Steel Chain (Trowchester Blues Book 3)

by Alex Beecroft

  Manoeuvring the larger chain around the pole, he fed it through the danger zone beneath the stack of weights, knelt, and then lay down on the floor facing the wall. He pulled the chain tauter. Like this, the padlock on his necklace was tugged out underneath the stack of hard-edged metal. He arched in a bow, trying to keep every other part of him out of the way, trying to keep his chin and his throat and his chest away.

  If the positioning was wrong, the falling weights would smash his jaw, his throat, his collarbone, his face. He’d be dead whichever, and maybe that would still be better than waiting for Piers to get home.

  He looked up at the iron poised above him, waiting to plunge down, and his nerve almost failed him. Mysteriously, he wanted to live. He hesitated to let loose the hammer blow that might end his life. But he told himself that Piers was probably going to kill him anyway when he returned. Aidan’s life was not the issue here. He was doing this for James.

  Oh well. He shut his eyes, let go of everything—hope, life, expectation—and reaching out blindly with his foot behind him, he began to work the belt loop off the seat.

  It took forever to get it to the edge of the seat and then it was slipping and it was gone. Everything around him slowed and sharpened until he could hear the whistle of falling metal as it cut through the air, each individual ingot of metal rattling as it moved. Very clearly in his head, a voice said, If you were ever going to scream, now would be the time. And since he had permission, he yelled with abandon as the cascade of noise slammed down past the end of his nose and time was suddenly going very fast again as he was jerked forward by the back of the neck and planted face-first into the vibrating metal.

  Still alive. But now pinned to the ground with his nose squashed against the weights. He felt back with his foot, found the loop of belt, and pulled down, raising the weights enough so he could tug the chain back through and sit up cross-legged and feel at his throat to see what damage he’d done.

  The padlock of his necklace was flattened out of shape. He felt a certain savage joy at that. But more so when it creaked and clicked in his fingers and a moment’s prying tugged it loose altogether. He slid the end of the staple out from its link of chain, and the whole necklace slid off his throat and lay in his hand looking innocent and strangely beautiful. Like an ornament, rather than the torture device it was.

  He dropped it and backed away, flabbergasted at how easy it was to shed. Like an eggshell, like a snake’s old skin, it was gone, and he would never have to force his way back in.

  Too big a thought to contemplate all at once, especially when he seemed to be feeling fuzzy around the edges. Where had he put his phone? A spike of terror as he thought there was someone breathing in the room with him. But no, that was his own rasping breath, rushed and panicked and . . . phone, phone? Where was there a phone?

  Upstairs in the bedroom.

  He ran for the door, up the stairs. Came to the living room and stopped. A closed door to the right concealed Piers’s office, where he had never gone. He often heard a phone ringing in there.

  What the fuck, he was already dead. Nowhere was forbidden to him now. He threw open the door, dived for the desk, and fumbled the phone receiver out of its dock. His fingers were trembling like aspen leaves as he tried to dial. Just reading James’s number off his wrist was maddeningly slippery, but he made it on the third attempt, collapsing in the leather chair as it connected, all the strength suddenly gone out of his legs.

  Please, please, please, he thought as James’s number rang. Please answer, don’t let Piers have got there yet, don’t be dead.

  “Hello?”

  James was speaking from another world. He must be, in order to sound so blithely unconcerned, so polite and so fuzzily self-assured. “James! Get out of there. He’s coming.”

  “What?” James’s voice swooped into puzzled concern laced with an academic curiosity that wasn’t nearly urgent enough. Aidan could have shaken him, except he wouldn’t ever do anything like that. “Aidan?”

  “Yes! Please. I don’t know where you are, but Piers didn’t really go away at all. He followed me. Now he thinks we’re having an affair. He’s coming for you. I don’t know how long it’s been since he left, but I think he’s going to your house. I’m scared he’s going to hurt you. Please get out.”

  “Shhh.” James tried to comfort him even now, though there was an undertone that spoke of rapid thought. “If he’s gone to my house, then neither of us need to panic. I’m still at the museum. Are you all right? Where are you?”

  “I’m . . . I’m . . .” It was a bad idea to ask him how he was. Now that he thought about it, he realized he wasn’t great. He was shaking so hard he could hardly hold the phone anymore, and he wanted to retch again, his mouth watering and overspilling because he couldn’t keep it shut. And he was so cold, his T-shirt wet with blood from the cuts on his throat and his feet numb under him. “I’m at . . . at . . . at my house. I’m n—not very well.”

  “All right, all right.” He wasn’t sure if James was talking to him or to himself, but he could hear distant sounds of movement—the beat of feet, doors closing. Underneath his shaky disconnection there was a sense of satisfaction. James was getting away. “Let’s not panic. You sound shocky. You need to drink something sweet and keep warm. Is there anything around you to drink?”

  “Are you . . . are you getting out?”

  “Yes,” James said, straightforward and certain. “I’m fine. I’m going to phone some friends and we’re coming to get you out of there. But for now, I need you to look around, find something to drink. Are there blankets?”

  Aidan giggled. How silly James was—who kept blankets in an office?

  “Are there curtains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wrap yourself in a curtain and find something to drink. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to hang up now, but it’s only so I can come and get you. All right?”

  Aidan’s breathing tangled itself in a knot, not knowing if he wanted to pant or sob. “I don’t want you to . . .”

  “I’m going to be there really soon, okay? Just hold on, and I’ll be there right away.”

  Silence on the line now. Aidan wanted to say something else, but all the words kept slithering away. Then he wanted James to say something. He really wanted James to say something, to still be there with him. “James?”

  But James had rung off like he’d said he would. So Aidan had to do what he had said he would too. That was the bargain.

  “Guh.” He sniffed back the sobs, forced his flailing limbs to grasp and open the desk drawers. Nothing in the top three shallow ones. Whiskey in the bottom one. He wasn’t sure if whiskey counted as a warm drink, was feeling around to see if there might be mixers of some sort when a cardboard file slid aside from a photo of a teenage boy.

  It’s me, he thought with a sentimental thrill, tears gathering in his eyes despite everything, because Piers kept a picture of him in his desk. Except . . .

  Except he’d never had a jumper like that. An instinct of wrongness crawled up underneath his skin at the shape of the boy’s mouth, his jaw. He had blond eyebrows. Aidan never had. His had always been brown, darker than his hair.

  Is it me? Had he thought that already? Oh yes, he had. But the boy wasn’t him, though he could have been. Could have been Aidan at sixteen. Had the same wheat-blond hair and lost expression.

  Aidan’s hair wasn’t that colour anymore. It had gone brown when he finished growing up . . . That wasn’t the point. The point was that it had been blond when he was sixteen. The point was that this boy might have been his twin, but clearly wasn’t him.

  Despite everything, he felt a pang of deep, bitter jealousy. Why did Piers have some other kid’s picture in his desk? Aidan was the one Piers had rescued from the streets. Aidan was the one who gave Piers his whole life in return. He was the important one! He was!

  He turned the photo over. On the back Piers had written “Beloved companio
n, rest in peace.” Beneath, the opening and closing dates of a life. Whoever the guy was, he died in 2005, the year before Piers had found Aidan.

  Which meant Aidan was the substitute. It meant that all the times Piers had been angry with him for no reason, all the times he carped or punished for no reason . . . it was actually because Aidan couldn’t be the beloved companion, he could only be himself. And that wasn’t enough. Every time Piers looked at him he must have seen enough to remind him of what he’d lost, but not enough to actually replace it.

  Aidan dropped the photo on the ground and put his heel through it. Piers . . . Even Piers hadn’t actually wanted him at all. Everything he had been through, everything he had put up with, telling himself it was for love . . . it had actually meant nothing at all.

  He stood up and made a step towards the curtain, trying to do what he had been told to do. But it was hard. Too hard. Much easier just to lie down between the window and the desk, to let the cold take him and hope to die so he would never let anyone down ever again.

  James had once been on a dig in the Amazon during which the floor of the temple he was excavating had fallen through, dumping half the expedition team into muddy water full of piranhas and alligators. It wasn’t all gently brushing dust off rocks. One of the first things one learned was not to panic.

  He glanced at the caller ID, wrote Aidan’s phone number on the back of his hand, then put the phone down to bring up Google Earth on his computer. A burial mound in the back garden made the house easy to pinpoint. He switched to Maps and wrote down the address as he wondered if he should get the emergency services involved. If he called for an ambulance, the police were sure to follow, and with the police involved, all hope of resolving this quietly and with minimal upset to Aidan would be lost. So he called Finn at the bookshop instead, pulling the phone with him to the window so he could look out into the little square just in front of the museum’s entrance and see if anyone suspicious arrived.

  “Fintan Hulme. What can I do for you that you can afford?”

  A tall figure turned the corner from Market Street, caught his eye with its sterling hair and its no-nonsense stride. “Finn, it’s James. Is Michael there?”

  “I’m not good enough for you now?”

  Damn it. Yes, that was the walk of a man who was very pissed off. A tall, distinguished, rich-looking gentleman in a temper. He didn’t have time for banter. “Finn, this is urgent. Long story, but there’s a man coming after me with ill intent, and there’s a lad who needs to be rescued. I need someone with a lot of muscle and a cool head, so if Michael is there, can you please send him to the back door of The Pines, 32 Caldecot Lane. I’ll meet him there, but if I’m not there within ten minutes, then send an ambulance and the police to that address, okay?”

  A scratching on the other end of the phone was probably Finn writing the address down. Then he said, “I’ve got it,” very soberly, not demanding explanations, not taking up valuable time with his incredulity. “Was that all?”

  “Yes. Thank you. I need to get off the phone so I can call someone else.”

  “Good luck. We’ll be there.”

  “We” was more than he’d bargained for, but Finn was clever and quick-thinking, so James wasn’t going to object to getting his help too. He moved away from the window before the man in the square could look up and see him, and grabbed his jacket from the back of the door.

  James made a final call, this time to his assistant curator. “Mandy? There’s going to be a man at the door fairly soon looking for me. Tall, silver-haired, nasty attitude. Give him the run around, would you? Keep him here as long as you can. I don’t know . . . keep telling him I’ve been seen in different galleries, and when that stops working remember that I’ve gone to Fen Dytton to look at what they’ve uncovered in their car park. I’ll explain tomorrow. Thank you!”

  James risked one more glance out of the window, back pressed to the wall to minimize the chances of anyone outside seeing him. The silver-haired man was just entering the building. Taking a deep breath, James strode for the back stairs, going down fast as he could without endangering himself. No sense in running so quick he tripped over his own feet and did the man’s job for him.

  The security door snicked shut behind him. Across the car park and the low fence beyond, and then he was striding out across the fields. No sign of Finn or Michael yet, but he wasn’t going to wait for them, and maybe they were coming by car . . . actually he should have thought of that. Too late now.

  Panic began to creep up on him during the walk. Five minutes had never seemed so long. A long shrill silver tone of rising anxiety sounded in the back of his head with every footfall. How exactly was he going to get in? What was he going to do when he did?

  He still wasn’t sure when he reached Aidan’s back garden and leaped over the low hedge where they had so disastrously talked. Thank God there were no photographers about today.

  Also thank God, there were Michael and Finn atop the mound, black against the sky, waiting for him.

  He strode up the slope. Finn turned to greet him. “This is very exciting, James. Not your usual style at— Ah!”

  Finn had stepped back as he turned, and his supporting foot seemed to have sunk ankle deep in the ground. There was a pattering and shifting of soil as Finn flailed with his arms, trying to keep his balance. James gawped for a moment before it occurred to him that the mound on which they stood must be unstable. Something must have disturbed the interlocking stones of the tomb roof and if Finn wasn’t careful he would—

  Michael dashed forward to catch Finn’s arm. Michael’s additional weight collapsed the structure underlying the hill. The ground crumbled away into a huge hole beneath them, and they both fell into darkness.

  “Dear God!” James struggled with his own instinct to dart forward, as if that would help. He backed away from the weak point, circled round to it at a lower elevation, and came across the gaping black mouth through which Finn had tumbled, just where he would expect to find an entrance—on a north-south axis, aligned with the winter solstice sunrise.

  The jumble of rocks and soil made no sense to him for a moment, until it occurred to him someone must have disturbed the monument before this—dug through and destabilized the walls, backfilled with dirt where stone should be. Grave robbers, they were the bane of his life.

  There was a horror-movie moment as a hand exploded out of the earth, followed by the black sleeve and the bowed back and black hair of Michael May, shedding soil like a zombie. “Fuck!” he said feelingly, and struggling to his feet, he turned to look inside the hill.

  A stone passage had been laid bare. The end had been smashed into ruin, stones dug out from the roof, but farther into the mound they were still tight against each other. Long narrow layers of slate, dry stone walled together and disappearing into the dark.

  “Finn?” James yelled. “Are you okay?”

  Michael scoffed unfeelingly. “If he wasn’t okay, he wouldn’t have gone exploring. He’d still be here, clutching whatever it was and demanding sympathy.”

  Finn was their mutual friend. James hadn’t had a lot to do with Michael—just had an impression of quiet practicality and a sense that very little phased the man. He was glad to see he’d been right as Michael took a torch out of his inside pocket and shone the beam down the corridor. “Finn, we’re here to do a job. Leave the sightseeing for later.”

  Finn came out of the passage like a ghost, white-faced, visibly shaken. “Is there time, James? I think . . . I think there’s something you ought to see.”

  He wanted to say no, but there was something about the blanched shock on Finn’s face, white as snow drops under his soil-filled hair, that made him think he should spare a moment.

  “In here,” said Finn unnecessarily, and led the way deep inside the mound. The featureless tunnel opened abruptly in the centre to a tall, domed room, formed out of stacked, interlocked thin wedges of pale stone. On any other occasion, James might have been full of profe
ssional awe at the sight. Today he was merely impatient.

  Two alcoves in which skeletons crouched, knees pulled to their chests. In the right-hand hollow, the remains were everything he would have expected. The skeleton was unevenly shaped. Each long bone and the skull probably from a different person. The whole amalgamated into one powerful ancestral figure. The bones were old, dried, stained with some kind of preservative, probably the residue from where the bodies had been lowered into peat bogs to mummify them. It was marvellous to find a Bronze Age mummy so whole. He wished he could feel reverent about it.

  But first he had to deal with the contents of the second alcove. Michael was already there. Just standing, looking down, torch in one hand, the other stuffed deep in his pocket as if to stop it from straying.

  These bones gleamed in the dark, still white. Still partially articulated. Sitting in the centre of a dark stain where the juices had run and soaked into the stones.

  “Is it . . .?” Finn asked from where he had retreated to the side of the door.

  Is it fresh? was what he meant. Was it a person in our lifetimes? Someone we could have talked to? Someone who surely shouldn’t have ended up lodged with the ancient dead?

  James tried to say yes but found his breath had failed him.

  “It’s a murder victim,” said Michael with a dark growl under the words. He leaned forward and peered at the corpse’s spine, just beneath where the jaw had not quite finished falling away. “Throat cut. Must have struggled. The killer nicked the jaw twice before he sawed in hard enough to dent the backbone.”

  He turned to look at James, his face lit from beneath by the torch, looking stony as the room around them. “Male or female?”

  James’s gaze flicked to the pelvis while the shrieking noise in the back of his mind took a step up in volume and intensity. “Male.”

  “This lad we came to rescue? We’d better get on that.”

  “No no no no.” James found himself laughing, though he was very far from amused. It couldn’t be true. This inference they were trying to draw was too melodramatic to be true. “People don’t just go around—”