I was telling myself this, rather pointlessly, when I heard a gentle meow above my head. I looked up and saw the same cat I’d seen before, sitting on a ledge on the first floor, peering at me in the way cats have that makes you feel somehow stupid. And thinking that gave me a stupid idea. If I could read people’s minds, could I read an animal’s mind? I focused on the cat, on whether it could get in and out of the house and if so, how?
Nothing happened except that I got a kind of mental white noise and the cat watched me, seeming vaguely amused. Then it stood with its tail straight up and trotted along the ledge toward a window, where it hunkered down then disappeared. It was impossible to see in the dark, especially with the ledge in the way, but two got you twenty that the sash window was a couple of inches open to let Fluffums squeeze in and out. It was also about ten feet up a sheer wall with no drainpipe and no ivy.
I backed up a few paces. The spotlight snapped on. I sprinted and, as I reached the wall, I leaped. It was just about the right height for me to grab the ledge with my fingertips. I heaved with all my might, scrabbled with my toes and managed to haul myself up until I had my elbows on the ledge. I was right. The window was open three inches—enough to be invisible from below but allow the cat access. I reached out and hooked my left hand inside. With the other, I eased up the sash another couple of feet, enough to allow me through. Then I pulled and I was inside.
It was a bedroom. The only light was the moonlight from outside. I hunkered down on the carpet, very still, thinking and listening to the sounds of the house. Apart from the odd creak of old timber expanding or contracting in the changing temperatures, it was perfectly silent. Something felt very wrong. I kept asking myself why a man who was so paranoid about his daughter’s safety would have such lax security in his house. I stood cautiously and moved around the room. My eyes were adjusting to the penumbra and I could just make out a queen-sized bed, a bedside table with a lamp and a wardrobe. It was hard to see colors, but it all looked a bit pink and frilly—not over the top, but pretty girly. It felt like it could be Ciara’s room, especially with the window being open for the cat, but there were no photos, no fluffy bears, no personal objects of any type—and above all, there was no Ciara.
I stepped over to the door. It was ajar. I pulled it gently open. It squeaked loudly. I froze. Listened. Nothing. I stepped out onto the landing. The house was as silent as a tomb. In front of me there was a balustrade above a stairwell. To my right, there were two doors and a third in the wall facing me. To my left, there was another door where the wall made a right angle. I crept over to it and took about thirty seconds turning the handle. Then I gave it a quick push so it wouldn’t squeak. The room was dark, but I could just recognize the bulk of a large, king-size bed. I listened for breathing or snoring. Nothing. I stepped two steps closer to the bed till I could see it in the faint moonglow from the window. It was empty, and like the other room, the bedside tables had no photos, no books, no glasses—no personal objects of any type, except I noticed a crucifix over the bed. It crossed my mind absently that he was Irish and probably a Catholic.
I stood staring and mentally scratching my head for a while. Then, a little less carefully I made my way to the other bedrooms. They were also empty. In the bathroom, there were the usual soaps and shampoos but no toothpaste and no toothbrushes.
They had moved out.
To where?
I went to the top of the stairs and listened. I knew what I was going to hear. Nothing. So, I trotted down and found an open-plan kitchen-breakfast room, a large oak-paneled dining room, a drawing room with a walk-in fireplace the size of a small house and a study that was locked.
It was locked at first, but after I applied some wire from my rucksack to it, it clicked open and I stepped in. The room was very dark. There were heavy curtains drawn across the windows and a strong smell of pipe tobacco. I felt my way to the desk and snapped on the lamp. It cast a pool of amber glow over dark wood and green leather. There was a black leather swivel chair behind the desk and in front of it a Chesterfield sofa and an armchair in a rich, washed green leather. I put my backside on the edge of the desk and stared around the room for a while, letting the things I saw sink in slowly, letting my mind look without me interfering for some clue to where they had gone. There didn’t seem to be anything of any particular interest, nothing unusual or out of the ordinary.
If they had left suddenly in the middle of school term, that was something he would have had to organize unexpectedly, and it occurred to me that that was something you would do from your desk—on the phone. I had a flash of an image of my dad making the arrangements to move from Boston to Oxford. I saw him at his desk, the phone in his left hand and jotting down details with a pen in his right hand—on a notepad.
I turned and surveyed the desk. The phone was there in its cradle. There was a notepad with a pen laid across it. There was nothing written on the pad, but I’d seen enough detective movies to know what to do next.
I dropped into the chair and pulled a pencil from his penholder. I rubbed it very gently over the pad, and sure enough, a couple of words began to appear—St. Mary’s and underneath it, underlined three times, Little Sodbury.
St. Mary’s. On an impulse, I pulled out my iPhone and googled St Mary’s, Little Sodbury. It said it was one of the few Catholic parish churches in England dating back to the Reformation. It was noted for its elaborate gilded carvings, statues and its crypt, which was currently closed to the public because of its state of disrepair. There was a telephone number listed. I leaned over and picked up the phone from the cradle and scrolled down to last number redial.
The last number Michael Fionn had called from that phone was St. Mary’s. They were there, absolutely no doubt in my mind. Thirty seconds on Google told me that Little Sodbury was just twenty miles away to the north. That was no distance at all, unless you were on foot. I had my license, but what I didn’t have was a car.
I could see in my mind’s eye the garage next to the house. It was a large garage. I could also see Ciara being picked up by her dad in a dark-blue, brand-new Jaguar. It was a car that you noticed—the kind of car you wouldn’t use if you wanted to keep a low profile and disappear for a while. The kind of car you’d leave in the garage while you rented something anonymous like a VW Polo.
And you would leave the keys where? Somewhere safe? I glanced around the study again, but even as I was looking, I knew that was wrong. His mind was on making his daughter safe, not his car. The key to the Jag would be in a fruit bowl on the kitchen countertop.
I got up and went next door.
It wasn’t in a fruit bowl. That’s where women leave their car keys. It was on a hook on the corkboard by the door. I stepped out into the night. The automatic door to the garage rumbled loudly in the darkness. My belly was burning and my heart was racing. What I was doing was totally crazy. If Dad had the faintest idea, he’d go insane. I was going to be in so much trouble. I would be expelled from the school. This was theft—theft of a motor vehicle. Grand theft auto. I could be arrested. I was seventeen. I’d be tried as an adult. I could even go to prison. I’d have a criminal record for the rest of my life. If I walked away now, I could pretend nothing had happened, go back home to bed, forget the whole thing and trust that Michael Fionn knew what he was doing and was the right man to protect his daughter. But the minute I climbed in that car and pressed the ignition, there would be no turning back.
The door came to a halt with a crash. I stepped forward and the lights came on automatically. And there it sat, looking at me with hungry eyes, like a big cat ready to pounce. The Jaguar F-Type, gleaming under the buzzing strip lights, three liter supercharged V6 engine, three hundred seventy-four break horsepower of pure grunt, zero to sixty in four point eight neck-breaking seconds, top speed of one hundred seventy miles per hour. All mine, all mine, all mine. I muttered, “Come to Papa, baby,” and climbed in.
My criminal career had begun. Victory was for the brave. There was no tur
ning back.
Chapter Eleven
I will tell you one thing I learned about driving a Jag with nearly four hundred break horsepower that accelerates from zero to sixty in less than five seconds. You don’t ever press your foot down on the accelerator. Never. Not unless you have a penchant for getting kicked in the ass by four hundred horses all at the same time. What you do is, you think about brushing the gas pedal with the air particles between the sole of your shoe and the pedal then you grip the steering wheel, close your eyes and pray for a painless death.
I put it in gear, let out the clutch, touched the gas—and screamed. This monster lunged out of the garage, hit the gravel spewing stones into the air, gripped the path with its claws and hurled itself toward the gate, making a noise like a starving leviathan trying to eat a pack of crazed lions. I made the mistake of shifting up to second gear and exited the gate sideways, torturing the tires. I changed up to third, put my foot on the gas and began to enjoy myself. Fourth, and I was surfing a giant tsunami on steroids through a narrow funnel of light. The hedgerows were the skeletons of banshees and hags that sprang out of the blackness, reaching at me with gnarled arms and fingers. The huge V6 growled and the wraiths were swept away into the shadowlands behind me.
I got to Little Sodbury in about twelve minutes. The town was dark but for a few melancholy street lamps in the main square, set around the village green. I slowed to a rumbling crawl, looking for the church spire. A fox loped across the common, its shadow eerily stretched and dancing in the dull, amber light. From the hedgerows, small eyes caught my headlamps for an instant and glowed a weird green. Then, like a ghastly shroud rising out of the graveyard, the church tower rose, not tall and pointed but squat and pale with battlements in the Norman style.
I killed the engine and climbed out. The car door slammed loudly in the stillness and the echo of my feet ricocheted off the slumbering shops and houses. I felt certain people must be hearing me and going to their windows to peer out, to see who was violating their peace. I stepped into the graveyard. The trees, tall poplars and massive yews, closed about me. An owl hooted and made the skin crawl on the back of my neck. I scanned the area and saw the great bird spread its wings and take off, silent as a shadow, into the night.
The church tower was an ink stencil against the sky, surrounded by the indistinguishable black shapes of trees and rooftops. I stumbled up the path, listening for any sound that might help me to find Ciara or her dad but hearing only the rustles, whispers and snuffles of small, secret animals in the shadows—not vampires, but hedgehogs, foxes, owls and cats. Yet these sounds seemed merely to whisper across the face of a darkness that lurked beneath them, like an emptiness from which only evil could emerge. I reached the top of the path and came to the vast Norman door set in the bell tower. I pushed at it, but it was locked and as solid as a block of granite. I peered through the keyhole but saw nothing.
The path encircled the church and I guessed it led to the vicarage at the back. Only this wasn’t a vicarage, I reminded myself. It was a Catholic church, and that was why her dad had come here to protect his daughter. Something about that troubled me, but at that moment, my mind was too occupied to see exactly what it was. I got to the back and searched along the path, not sure what I was looking for. I really hadn’t planned this properly. But how could I? I was making it up as I went along. I had no other choice.
At first, it seemed like everything was dark and still and silent. I sighed with frustration, wondering what the hell to do next. I was about to turn back when something caught the corner of my eye. I froze and scanned the area again. I know there are things you can see with your peripheral vision that you cannot see straight on, so I moved my head around as though I was just about to turn away, trying to capture again what I had glimpsed before. If anyone had spotted me, they would have thought I was out of my mind, but it worked. Just where the church wall bent in to meet the later building of the priest’s residence, there was an almost invisible glow of light on the grass.
I sprinted over to it as silently as I could. I had struck the jackpot. At ground level, there was an arched window a foot across and not more than six inches at its highest point. It had three iron bars set in it, and there was light filtering out. I dropped to my belly and peered in. It was hard at first to make out what I was seeing because of the grime on the glass and the angle I was at. But finally, I saw them. There was a middle-aged man in black with a shock of white hair swept back from his face. He was standing and seemed to be talking, though I could hear nothing of what he was saying. There was another man sitting opposite him. He was harder to make out, but he appeared to be about forty-five or fifty, and he was dressed in a tweed jacket and dark pants. I guessed he was Michael Fionn, because Ciara was sitting next to him, staring at her feet with her hands between her knees.
I had found her. That, at least, was something.
Then I became aware of something else. It was a pair of feet in very shiny black shoes. Because of where I was looking from, I couldn’t see any more than the feet and two slim legs in black trousers from just below the knees. They were standing at right angles to the guy in black, whom I assumed to be the priest. They were quite still while the priest talked. Ciara’s dad appeared worried and Ciara seemed depressed. For some reason, those black feet made me feel really uncomfortable.
Then they moved. They stepped forward and turned toward Ciara and her dad. Now I could see the whole body, but from above and to the side. I could see the top of the head and the silhouette. It was a man. He was also dressed all in black. He was slim and young and athletic, and there was something about him that was familiar. Then he stepped forward and hunkered down just in front of Ciara and took her hands in his. She looked up into his face. I couldn’t decipher her expression, but her body language was receptive. My heart skipped and there was a hot pellet in my belly. I knew him. I knew him very well and I knew he was very dangerous.
It was Dicky Nixon.
My mind was suddenly on fire. What is he doing here? What is he saying to her? Why does she seem to be smiling at him and listening? Can’t she see him for what he is? I was suddenly in a fever. For a fraction of a fraction of a second, I was going to read her mind, but I recoiled from the thought. It would be the ultimate betrayal of our trust, and there would be no coming back from that. But him? I owed him nothing and I knew—like I knew I had bones in my body—that he meant her no good. I fastened my mind on him and focused.
And I was hit by an express train. I was actually knocked back an inch from the window. My head was reeling. I stared down and saw that he was staring straight up at me. His eyes were locked on mine like a vise. He was rising to his feet, moving toward me, and I could feel the steel fingers of his mind reaching inside mine, gripping at me, and I could hear him demanding, “Who are you? Who are you?”
I wrenched myself away and rolled. I scrambled to my feet and ran. My head was reeling with questions, but one thing I was absolutely certain about was that my presence there was putting Ciara at risk. I had to go. For her safety—for her life—I had to get out of there. Now!
I ran like all the hosts of Hell were on my heels. For all I knew, they were. I skidded around the corner and raced down the path. I vaulted a stone tomb, stumbled and fell. But I was on my feet again and running practically before I’d hit the ground. Something big and black swooped overhead. The trees rustled. I vaulted another stone tomb and skidded to the gate, grabbed the post then skidded around it and I was running across the common toward the Jag.
A voice bellowed, “Oi! You! Stop!”
I skidded for the third time, stopped and turned back. It was a cop—what the Brits call a bobby—standing in the middle of the common, staring at me. His face was in shadow under his helmet, under the street lamp. There was no cop car. He was just standing there, looking at me. I thought I heard him say to come over there, but as I went to step toward him, I realized I hadn’t heard him speak. I swore—“Shit!”—turned, ran and jumpe
d into the Jag convertible without opening the door. I hit the ignition and was burning rubber, screaming out of there while he was sprinting across the square toward me.
I side-slid into the corner, and as I accelerated away, back toward Oxford, I could see him in my rearview, thumping down the road after me freakishly fast. My heart seemed to be doing two-forty to the minute and my breathing was ragged. I felt sick and my hands were trembling. My mind was in turmoil. I had left Ciara back there with those creatures, but I knew beyond any doubt that if I had stayed, it would have been disastrous for her. It might have cost her her life.
I needed to think—coldly, rationally. I had to think!
I was swerving wildly on the road, fighting to control the machine. I looked at the speedometer. I was doing one hundred miles per hour on a winding country road. Something black swooped overhead. I glanced up. The black stencil of a giant bat or an eagle swooped over me and soared up into the night sky, banked and glided across the moon. I inhaled deeply, steadied my breathing, relaxed my arms on the wheel and eased off the gas to pull over. I had to stop the storm in my mind. Stop the chaos. Still waters. Blue skies. Stillness. I focused on these. A still lake. A still lake under a still, blue sky. Stillness.
What did I know for a fact? I knew that I’d had to leave or it would have cost Ciara her life. Fact. I knew I could not leave her there. I had to rescue her. Fact. Therefore, inescapable deduction, I had to return, better prepared with foreknowledge and with a plan how to get her out.
I knew that Friday was the day when they were going to go for her. Fact. I knew it was already Friday. Fact. And I knew that Dicky was there with her, that he was an invincible swordsman and a mind reader. He had to be one of them—or us! Fact. So, the inescapable deduction was that they already had her. I could feel the wild storm starting again in my chest and in my brain. I breathed. Still waters. Still sky.
The Dreaming Spires Page 9