‘Drill again?’ asked Rocco. ‘You mean from scratch?’
‘It’ll only take a few minutes. You know what you’re doing.’
The locked gate of their compound rattled suddenly.
‘Hey!’ called a voice from behind the fence. ‘Open up. You’re busted. The police are coming.’
The voice at the fence belonged to Dick English, the security guard who had seen through Charlie’s forged permits from day one. Charlie reluctantly opened the gate and let the man in. There was a sense of inevitability about this moment. Rocco threw down his tools in disappointment. They were less than thirty minutes from getting that capsule out of the ground. Now their efforts would all be for nothing.
‘You’ve been busted,’ repeated the guard.
Charlie considered making a run for it, but he knew he wouldn’t get far. So he held out his hands and waited for the guard to click the cuffs onto him.
‘What are you doing?’ English asked.
‘You’re taking me down,’ sighed Charlie.
‘Huh? No, I came to warn you. The fake permits have filtered through the system and City Hall is on to you. They’re sending the cops round. They’ll be here in thirty minutes. We have to move fast.’
‘Huh?’
‘Let’s get this sucker out of the ground before they get here. We can do this. How can I help?’
‘Er, right,’ said Charlie. ‘You heard the man. Let’s get that time capsule out of there!’
The drilling process was manic this time. Once they had conquered the initial challenge of preventing the new hole from sliding into the old one, the procedure was fast and accurate. The scoping camera confirmed their success, showing the ring at the top of the capsule to which a hook could be attached.
The time capsule glugged out of the ground and flopped onto the mud. The high-fives were an indulgence that had to be rushed, however. The three of them were able to carry the time capsule to the rear of the guard’s truck, parked just outside the gate. As they placed it inside and closed the doors, Charlie could see the flashing lights of approaching police cars passing by on the highway. If the cops took the turning into Flushing Meadows Park, they would be here in less than five minutes.
‘Close up the site behind me,’ shouted English. ‘I’ll get this thing out of here.’
Rocco and Charlie scrambled to collect any personal items that might identify them. They slammed the plywood gates closed and quickly thrust a padlock through it, before running into the shelter of the trees that surrounded the site. From there they watched English’s truck with the hidden time capsule as it rounded a corner and disappeared from view, replaced almost immediately by the arrival of several police cars.
‘Good work,’ said Charlie, watching the police investigation from a safe and discreet distance.
‘What now?’ asked Rocco. ‘Where’s the rendezvous?’
‘Rendezvous?’
‘Where do we meet this guy and open up the time capsule?’
Charlie took off his dark glasses.
‘Meet?’
Rocco sighed at the realisation that they had been duped. Under pressure, exhausted and frightened, they had naïvely placed their trust in a stranger.
‘Come on!’ shouted Rocco. ‘We have to follow him in my car!’
While police officers massed around the muddy crime scene within the remains of the New York State Pavilion, Rocco and Charlie sped out of the park in Rocco’s rented SUV in pursuit of the thief who had stolen their stolen capsule.
‘He’s turned onto Grand Central Parkway!’ shouted Charlie. ‘He’s heading for LaGuardia.’
‘No, look – he’s turned onto the Van Wyck Expressway.’
‘He’s taking the exit. Quick, Rocco, get into that lane.’
They swerved into the exit lane and followed the security guard as he negotiated several sets of traffic lights and back streets until he passed back underneath the Van Wyck Expressway and turned into the parking lot of a branch of Home Depot. They parked up at the far corner of the car park and watched as he ran into the store, emerging minutes later with a trolley laden with power tools.
‘Keep your head down, Charlie. Don’t let him see us while he’s loading.’
‘Why don’t we rush him now?’ asked Charlie.
‘In a public parking lot with video cameras everywhere?’ asked Rocco. ‘Not a good plan. We have to tail him until he’s ready to unload it.’
English left the trolley standing as he drove away from the store. They followed again, ever more nervous that their continued presence would become noticeable to him, but he drove slowly and cautiously, respectful of the precious load he was carrying, and Rocco was able to keep up with ease. After twenty minutes of uneventful driving they arrived at a residential street in the district of Whitestone. The truck stopped outside a beachfront house and the security guard ran inside.
‘This is our opportunity,’ said Rocco. ‘Let’s get it.’
The two men rushed over to the truck and began yanking at its rear doors. English emerged from his house with a trolley and immediately reached for his gun.
‘Good work, soldier,’ said Charlie. ‘We sure outsmarted those cops. Well done.’
English shook his head.
‘I thought you were on our side,’ groaned Charlie.
‘Why did you think I let you go through with your farcical charade of forged permits and pretending to be part of some government agency, Charlie?’
‘You didn’t believe all that?’
‘I didn’t have to. I knew exactly who you were and what you were doing. My boss told me to expect you. The one thing he didn’t expect was that you would do such a great job, and for that I’m grateful. But the time capsule stays with me, now.’
‘Your boss?’ asked Rocco, intrigued. ‘Who are you working for?’
‘His name is Alois Mitford. I am to deliver the relevant contents of this capsule to him.’
‘In Spain?’ asked Rocco.
‘Spain? No, things have moved far beyond that. Mitford’s almost ready to fulfil his life’s ambition. It’s gonna shake things up, apparently. Any day now he’s gonna change the world. Not that I believe a word of it. Nor do I give a damn. He’s got his agenda. I’ve got mine.’ English waved his gun intimidatingly. ‘Enough of that. Put the capsule on this trolley and wheel it to the dock for me.’
They did as instructed, and were surprised to find a flybridge motor yacht moored at the private dock to the rear of the house.
‘Nice!’ said Charlie. ‘Must be a bit of a strain on a security guard’s wages?’
‘Mitford is paying me well for my services.’
They carried the time capsule into a cabin and placed it on a mattress. It fitted at an angle, and English strapped it down and covered it with blankets.
‘Bring me the power tools from my truck,’ he added. ‘It’s going to be a long voyage. I might open this thing up before I get there.’
‘Long voyage?’ asked Rocco, letting Charlie fetch the boxes from the truck. ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to Spain with this?’
‘I’m not. Mitford is meeting me in Guiana.’
‘Any chance of a ride, then?’ asked Rocco. ‘You and I are colleagues. I work for him, same as you. He wants me down in Guiana too. You don’t need to work against me. We can work together.’
‘Sorry bud, but this is between me and him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You don’t think I’m just gonna hand this thing over to him when I get there? The guy is worth billions. I’m gonna take him for every cent before I give him what he wants.’
***
Alois Mitford felt a weight rise from his shoulders. The burden he had carried for most of his seventy-two years was lifting. Nothing in his life had made him happy. No pill could be synthesized powerful enough to negate his melancholy. No amount of inherited Nazi gold could compensate for the tristesse that gnawed at his bones. In his youth, before he commissioned
his own medical team to research suitable pharmaceuticals for his condition, he had briefly turned to pre-existing mind-altering drugs to escape his reality, but he found his re-emergence from narcotic fantasyland into his true self to be more unbearable with each attempt. Eventually he had to suffer the excruciating ordeal of giving up opiates and other drugs altogether.
Suicide was a topic he had read about more than any other. He possessed a small library at his home on the subject. He was an expert on every imaginable technique of self-slaughter: fast, slow, painless, agonising, messy, clean –all had occupied his mind over many years. And yet, even in his darkest hours, he would always reject the option of termination. Something deep within him told him it was his duty to experience the living hell that he inhabited, and so the suffering continued, day after day, week after week, year after year.
He despised his cells. Hated his DNA. Loathed his entire being. He was fifty per cent Adolf Hitler. It was an impossible legacy to live with, yet somehow he had found the inner strength to do just that, and today that torment had begun to ease. The long and dark tunnel of his life finally had a point of light, and he was heading towards it.
He gazed out of the window of the private jet, looking down at the patchwork of dusty fincas, lush vineyards and huddled towns. From this elevation Spain appeared insignificant, the complex lives of its inhabitants meaningless. He thought about the pilots he had hired to take him to French Guiana. Both reasonably young men, probably had wives, maybe kids too. Would they shortly cease to exist? It was highly likely. Their children too. Would this plane vanish from the sky on its return flight? Would the leather on the seat that supported him so comfortably return to the cow from which it was taken?
In the opposite seat was the Dalí mannequin, liberated from the museum and given the honour of its own seat on the jet. Would that cease to have been manufactured? Mitford looked out again and saw a motorway stretching across an arid landscape. Would the cars on that road look substantially different soon? Would they evolve along alternative stylistic and mechanical principles? The motorway reached the outskirts of a town. Would the buildings over which he was flying shortly be eradicated from the soil, replaced by trees or fields or other structures, perhaps? Even the weather might be different. Global warming might be delayed … or accelerated.
He wondered if those given the chance of life would be more worthy than those whose lives he would soon erase. It didn’t matter. It was the right thing to do. The planet was populated by the wrong people. It was time to do something about it. Whatever the result would be, he would never know it. The world would change, he was sure of that, and his own life would be undone, his decades of pain deleted. Just a couple more days, now. There would be no heaven waiting for him, just the erasure he longed for, preceded by a few moments of glorious satisfaction that he had succeeded in his mission.
He felt the unfamiliar shape of a smile forming across his face.
WEDNESDAY 8TH MAY 2013
Stiperstones Manor glowed in the pale morning light, a dim beacon amid the mists that clung to the fields. Ruby put her hand on Ratty’s shoulder as they stood before the quiet house. He gulped and handed his key to the Patient, who opened the heavy front door.
‘I really thought she would be waiting here,’ Ratty yawned, wiping a tired tear from his eye. ‘Frightfully sorry if I’ve wasted your time.’
‘We’re your friends, Ratty. We couldn’t let you go through this alone. Whether or not you find her, we’re still here for you,’ said Ruby. ‘Right, Patient?’
‘True friendship can exist only between equals,’ said the Patient. ‘We are friends. We are equal. We will share equally any joy or pain you are about to experience.’
Ratty acknowledged his gratitude with a nod. The three of them had already shared the tedium of the long drive from Spain to England. Ratty had not slept. He had been too fired up by the desperate hope of finding Lady Ballashiels waiting at Stiperstones and by the nagging concern that she might not hang around there for long. The Patient had repeatedly made clear his unhelpful view that returning to locate one person was statistically insignificant and irrelevant given that Alois Mitford appeared to have hinted at some kind of scheme that would threaten far more people and that, logically, it would make more sense to solve that mystery first.
Now they had arrived, however, and Ratty’s positivity was beginning to wilt. The grand hallway betrayed no indication of his mother’s presence. There were no scratchy glam rock sounds leaking from the record player in the music room –Ratty had been convinced his mother would want to play the Abba and Mud records she used to love. There was no female attire hanging from the coat hooks. No sign of a woman’s touch in mitigating the filth that defined the interior of the house.
Sensing his friend’s diminishing attachment to the optimistic energy that had recently fuelled him, the Patient said, ‘Ratty, I propose that you head straight to the kitchen and make us all tea while Ruby and I search the rooms for any signs that Lady Ballashiels may have been here.’
Ratty noticed that the Patient’s choice of words reinforced the sense of defeat that he was feeling. He walked slowly to the kitchen and robotically made tea while his friends searched the rooms. He had been blinded by his hopes, he realised. He had trusted the word of a crazy old man who claimed to be the product of the most repugnant romantic fusion in history, and who blamed the Ballashiels clan for starting a war. Pot, kettle, black, he thought to himself. There was no hard evidence that his mother was alive, or that she was free of Mitford’s clutches, or that she had returned to England.
He began to regret that he had ever defiled his grandmother’s memory by opening her forbidden room and embarking on this doomed journey. Fate had teased him with its characteristic indifferent cruelty. He had almost sensed his mother’s former presence, almost felt the gentle warmth of her fading aura. Nothing would ever be the same again. He quietly sobbed over his tea.
He felt a hand upon his shoulder and a shiver of comfort rattled through him. He wiped his eyes and looked up into Ruby’s face. She kissed his cheek.
‘Checked the bedrooms?’
She nodded.
‘First and second floor?’
Another nod.
‘Both wings?’
‘Ratty, we’ve checked all of the upstairs room, even the turret.’
‘Anything?’
She shook her head.
‘Basement?’
‘The Patient’s down there now. I’d have thought he’d have a phobia about being underground but he said he feels at home there.’
‘What am I to do, Ruby? I can’t go back to Spain, but I can’t rest here knowing Mother might be alive somewhere.’
‘If she wants to find you, she will. And you can make that easy for her by waiting here.’
‘I’ve waited here for over thirty years already. She didn’t come for me then.’
Ruby felt a lump in her throat. There was nothing she could say to that. When the Patient returned she felt relief that he was there to share the awkwardness.
‘The subterranean level displays no sign of current or recent occupancy,’ declared the Patient.
‘Outbuildings,’ whispered Ratty. ‘Would you mind checking the outbuildings?’
‘No problem,’ said Ruby, wrapping an arm over the Patient’s shoulder. ‘Come on.’
They exited by the rear door from the kitchen into the gardens. The door closed with a click. Ratty was now convinced his mother was not going to return. Mitford must have lied. Sending Ruby and the Patient to check the outbuildings would be a waste of time, but it gave him a few minutes of privacy to let decades of pent-up emotion spill out in a most un-British manner. It took almost half a roll of kitchen towel to extinguish the flow of tears.
The back door swung open. Ratty didn’t look up. He sensed a woman’s hand once more upon his shoulder.
‘I wanted to see you one last time, boy,’ said a soft voice.
Ratty rubbed his eyes. That
didn’t sound like Ruby. He looked at the hand on his shoulder. It was wrinkled, liver spotted, unfamiliar and yet familiar. There was perfume in the air, a scent he hadn’t recalled since boyhood. And there was a sense of completeness in his soul. He looked up and gazed into the sad, penitent eyes of the mother who had abandoned him when he had needed her the most.
‘Mater?’ he squeaked.
‘Oh, Justin,’ she said, and stroked his forehead like she had last done when he was seven. He stood up and tried to hug her with arms that trembled wildly, but she backed away, wincing in pain. ‘No, boy. The British only hug horses and dogs, remember? And not behind the shoulder. Too painful.’
‘Terribly sorry. Arthritis, is it?’
‘Buckshot. What are you drinking? Tea? Could do with something stronger. Where’s the gin?’
‘Buckshot?’ asked Ratty as he poured her a messy gin and tonic with hands that felt only half attached to his arms. ‘You mean some blasted rotter shot you? Who did that to you? Tell me immediately, Mater, and I’ll kill them.’
She gave a half smile, loaded with enigma.
‘Calm yourself, boy. No point getting angry about it. Sit.’
‘But it’s not right. No one should be shooting you. Especially in the back. What kind of brigand does that to a lady?’
‘No brigand did it.’
‘Then who shot you?’
‘You did, boy.’
‘I did?’
‘Can’t say I blame you.’
‘You mean, I shot you?’
‘You shot me.’
‘How could I have done that?’
‘Been trying to get back to you for days, boy. Bloody nightmare, I’ve had. When I finally broke away from Mitford’s control, I came straight here. I watched you. I trailed you to West Dean while you were trying to piece together my motherin-law’s movements in 1937. I followed you back here again. I tried to bring myself to make contact with you. But I couldn’t do it. The guilt was too entrenched. I thought it might be better if I left you to live your life without the upheaval of my return. And then, when I finally gathered the courage to speak to you, you shot me with that damned blunderbuss and two of the old servants dragged me away.’
The Dali Diaries (The Ballashiels Mysteries Book 2) Page 22