The Aurora Conspiracies- Volume One

by Sam Nash

  ***

  Dan and Mary left the train at Brighton Station, and meeting no resistance, jumped into a taxi headed for their grandfather’s home. Mary singled out the key from her satchel, opened the door and punched in the alarm code on the panel in the hallway.

  “Well, even if we aren’t being followed, it’s obvious that we would come here so we must be quick.” Mary said, rifling through the stack of junk mail on the hall table, looking for clues.

  “What could Pip have known that would be of threat to the Ministry of Defence? Has he ever spoken about it before?” Dan said, opening the door of the study and scanning the room.

  Mary followed. “Not to my knowledge. His warning to Yelena was that his information was backed up and automated if anything were to happen to him, but I can’t imagine that Grampy would have known how to set that up.” The memory of his ruined face crept into her mind, replenishing the sorrow dwelling in the shallows of her consciousness. Every book, ornament and picture in his den, transmitted another reminder of his absence. A recollection of joyful times. She couldn’t let her grief derail her now. Not when there was a chance of securing her freedom.

  Sitting clumsily in the leather chair, Mary raked through the drawers and neatly piled letters and bills from the trays on Pip’s desk. Every mundane item evidence of nothing more than a well-managed household. Dan studied the family photographs mounted on the walls. The generational group picture of Mary front and centre, her parents David and Lily behind her and her grandparents Pip and Minnie at the edges of the frame.

  Mary detected a suppressed note of hurt in her brother. A feeling that his acceptance back into the family he was banished from, had come too late. His eyes shifted from the photo before the grievance could score too deeply into his thoughts, and onto the next picture frame on the wall.

  “Who is the woman in this photo? You don’t often see old sepia tones like this anymore.”

  “That’s Grampy’s grandmother, our great-great grandmother. Her name was Phebe, the biblical spelling. It’s funny you know, he rarely spoke of her, but he would straighten that frame virtually every time he passed it. Almost like paying respect to a religious deity, except Grampy wasn’t a religious man at all.”

  Dan gently lifted the frame from the wall hook and took a closer look. Her old skin hollowed beneath the high bone structure of her cheeks. The spark of mischief captured in her clouding eyes. It was like looking at Mary in her dotage. He flipped the frame over. Pip had taken inordinate care of its upkeep. Fresh tape sealed the board against the invasion of unwanted dust and insects.

  A curious mark was drawn into the backing. Dan righted the picture once more, checking that that he was not seeing things. The same mark was present on Phebe’s clothing, fashioned into a brooch. “Hey Mary, come and look at this.” Dan said, turning and re-turning the small frame in his hands.

  “We haven’t got time to reminisce. I’ll tell you all that I know another time, when we are less in danger of being killed.” Mary was upside down under the desk, smoothing her hands across the underside of the drawers. Exasperated, she got up and wandered over to her brother. “What?”

  “This brooch Phebe is wearing. It’s the symbol physicists use for wavelength – Lambda, only it seems very unlikely for an old lady to be wearing mathematical symbols made from gold at that time.”

  “Really? It looks like the letter A to me. See, where the circle bisects the legs of lambda? Wait…I’ve seen that before…” Mary pushed her brother backwards from the rug to the parquet flooring beyond. “Give me a hand, will you? We need to shift these chairs.”

  Dan did as he was asked, placing Phebe down carefully on Pip’s desk and lifting the studded leather, wing-backed chairs into the hallway. Mary grabbed the edges of the rug and rolled. Within the rectangle of darker shaded parquet tiles, was a small, inlaid brass plaque bearing the same symbol that Grandma Phebe wore in the photo.

  Crouching low, they examined the metal surface. Dan said, “It looks brand new.”

  Mary touched the cold shiny surface with a reverent finger. “It does, except it’s been here since I was a little girl. I remember Grampy shooing me out of here once when the rug was away being cleaned.” She traced her finger around the emblem, over the small mound orbiting the mathematical sign, and then down to a keyhole. “It must be a lock box or safe.”

  “But Pip’s keys will be stored with the police while the crime is investigated back in London.”

  “True, but Grampy preferred to travel light. He usually only took a front door key with him if he was travelling by train. Things like garage, back door, shed and car keys he hid in the house.” Mary stood erect, then shot into the kitchen, making a beeline for the welsh dresser behind the breakfast table. Wrenching open its middle drawer, Mary lifted the ring, heavy with miscellaneous keys, and gave them a rattle.

  Returning to the brass plaque, they analysed the size of the aperture and judged each key on the fob to be too large. Starting to flag, Mary sat back on her haunches and sighed. “He could have hidden it anywhere.”

  “He wouldn’t have made it impossible for you to find. Think, this all seems to link to Grandma Phebe. Are there any other photographs of her?”

  “Only one, that I can think of.” Mary led Dan into the lounge. Kneeling on the carpet next to the credenza, Mary opened the left-hand cupboard door and slid out a frail photo album. Its cover and thick boarded pages creaked as she moved them. Passed faded images of their father’s christening; of Pip and Minnie’s wedding, to the oldest pictures filed near the back.

  There was Phebe, younger and more resplendent in a gown of panelled lace and silk. Her hair piled high on her angular head, the brooch sitting on the collarbone area of her dress. The mounting board, cut in a neat oval around her body, was worn and faded. Mary centred the photograph inside the mount with a tiny push from a fingertip. As she did so, the card gave way at the base and something fell out. The dull steel of the missing key.

  Scrambling to her feet, Mary dashed back into the study, closely followed by Dan’s less coordinated limbs. A nervous fumble later and Mary turned the key in the plaque lock. Their expectations of unsealing a vault were for nought. The plaque hinged open to reveal a modern digital keypad underneath.

  “Wow. Pip sure was safety conscious. What was he hiding down there, the crown jewels? Any idea of the combination?”

  Mary shot Dan a glare that reaffirmed his respect for her dearly departed. She turned the key over in her hand thinking, before punching in the birth dates of Pip, her grandmother, her father, Dan and finally herself. None of the combinations were successful.

  “Don’t suppose you know Phebe’s birthday, do you?” Dan said.

  “No, I don’t, but I know how to find out.” Mary jumped up from the floor and scanned the book shelves that filled one entire wall of the study. Homing in on the oldest, leather bound tomes at the foot of the wall, Mary retrieved a weighty book and balanced it on Pip’s desk. “The family bible. It has births and deaths listed in the first few pages. I think that it first belonged to Phebe.”

  Lifting the gossamer sheets with a tender touch, Mary turned to the page painted with the family tree. At the top, Phebe and Judge Charles Lawrence, her husband, with their dates of birth handwritten in elaborate script.

  “Did you hear something just then?” Dan cocked his head towards the door. He stared out of the window between the branches of the mock orange.

  “That’ll be next door’s cat. It jumps the gate at the side of the house making it bang against the catch.” Mary muttered.

  Refocused, and committing the numbers to memory, Dan pressed the buttons on the keypad lock and waited for its response. Two short beeps and a loud click. A formerly invisible seam appeared in the parquet flooring, revealing a panel of around two feet square. The panel dropped an inch and slid under the boards, exposing a fireproof safe. Using Phebe’s birthday once again, they gained access to the contents within.

  Piles of pape
rwork, a jewellery box and a brown leather clad journal lay in the recessed steel safe. They both hesitated, acutely aware of the trespass upon Pip’s sanctuary. His most coveted and secret of places, plundered on the day of his passing. Mary reached in first, lifting out the box and resting it on the floor beside them. Dan grabbed the journal and flipped to the coverslip inside.

  He read aloud. “The Journal of Dr Pip Lawrence, Eighth Earl of Sedgewell.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “What? You are making that up, let me see.” Mary snatched the book from her brother’s hands and drew a rapid breath over the words. “Grampy must have been joking at the time of writing.”

  “Really?” Dan delved into the stack of paperwork, drawing out a bundle tied with legal ribbon. The top-most sheet read: Transfer of Assets to the Eighth Earl of Sedgewell and Dissolution of Abeyance.

  Stunned, but with curiosity unsated, Mary opened the large leather jewellery box. There was Grandma Phebe’s brooch, a little piece of family history, resting in her hands. To the side of the pin, Mary pulled out a thin cardboard booklet, tucked into the side cushions of the box. A British passport. Flicking through to the final page, she gasped. It showed her own photograph from around the time of her graduation when she was at the height of her hair bleaching and dyeing phase. The long brassy blonde style did not suit her. Her date of birth printed next to the photo was correct, but not her name. The passport bore the moniker, Ms Mary Sedgewell.

  “I don’t understand…” Mary said, showing her discovery to her brother.

  “Neither do I, and I don’t think we will have time to figure it out. We are not alone.” Dan scuttled to the hall window and, seeing the large black vehicles pull onto Pip’s drive, dropped the door latch. “I told you I heard something. Take the passport, it might come in handy. I’ll tidy things up here, you have to leave now. Thank God, we have telepathy, I’ll keep you up to date. Go!”

  Mary slipped the brooch and passport into her satchel and made for the back door. The key was in the lock. Turning it, she paused, remembering the noises from earlier and the assumption that the source was next door’s cat. “Right then, whoever is out there waiting for me beware…the gloves are off.”

  Bolstered with adrenalin and the confidence of home territory, Mary swung open the door and bolted. Soaring over the patio flower borders, she ran across the lawn, vaguely aware of a presence stumbling over the dustbins at the side of Pip’s house. As the agent shouted her whereabouts to his colleagues, Mary was mounting the ladder to the treehouse at the rear of the garden. Three steps across the platform and a short jump down into Mrs Ogden’s garden next door. Down the alleyway at the side of the house and along the row of garages behind a new estate.

  This was Mary’s hometown. There was not a cut through or rat run that she didn’t know intimately. A mad dash through a couple more streets and Mary hopped a double-decker bus heading towards the famous Brighton Lanes. A maze of tiny streets, packed with tourist shops, whose products spilled out onto every cobbled alley. Thousands of people condensed in the narrowest of roads, preventing the passage of traffic. The perfect hiding place to collect her thoughts and figure out a more lasting escape.

  Her first port of call was to the sandwich shop in which she spent most Saturdays of her youth, earning pocket money. The owner, Cath, extended her bone crushing arms around Mary and contracted them, python style. “It’s been too long. How are you? I’ve seen you on TV, the Prime Minister thinks you’ve lost your mind.”

  Mary extricated herself from Cath’s embrace, breathing heavily through the darting pain. “I know, it’s all such a mess. Can I stay for a little while, maybe use your phone, please?”

  “Of course. Let me just serve these last customers, it’s near to closing time anyway. Go on upstairs, make yourself at home.”

  Surrounded by lively crowds, in the heart of a vehicle free zone, with no conceivable way that the minister’s men could trace her, Mary relaxed. Poor Dan. I hope those agents are not conjuring charges to lay on him. He’ll let me know if he’s in trouble. Sitting on the wide window ledge, she watched the tourists mill about in their blissful ignorance, buying trinkets for their loved ones back home.

  The thought of Dan being her sole remaining relative hurt deeply. Pull yourself together, Mary. You need to figure out what to do now. Can’t stay here. She pulled the passport out from her bag and examined the dates once more. Still a good eleven months before it expires. Why on Earth did Grampy have a fake passport made for me? And using a different name too. I suppose I could buy a plane ticket and disappear, but where would I go? Connie’s money wouldn’t last long. She held the brooch in her palm, tracing the smooth lines under her thumb. The black jewel was sharp to the touch. What stone is that, Jet perhaps, or Agate? Cath’s husband would know.

  Slipping the passport into an inside pocket in her bag, she felt its progress impeded by something. She fished her hand down, and retrieved a pale business card, printed in golden ink. The contact information from Shrimant Karan Shinde, the regal Indian gentleman at Ditchley. He would have the resources to help me escape, but what would he want in return? I bet he has contacts in high places though. He seemed to care a lot about Parth’s idea of providing free medicines to the poorest people of the world. Maybe he would know how to stop the cabinet ministers from medicating the water supply, or at least know other people who could help.

  Mary stared at the creased business card for a long time. Karan wanted her to fly to India. Connie wanted her to leave the country. Pip left her a fake passport, providing her with a means of escape even after his death. Everything seemed to be pointing towards fleeing her place of birth, and yet the thought of leaving twisted her gut into knots. A part of her still hoped that events would dissipate, allowing her to return to her studies.

  It can’t hurt to speak with him. Mary picked up Cath’s portable telephone from its dock and dialled the number on the card. After three rings, Mary almost hung up, her courage failing her. Before the fourth ring, Karan answered. “Yes? Who is this?” His voice harsh and unnerving.

  “It’s Mary. Mary Arora, we met at…”

  “I remember, Mary. I am glad that you chose to make contact. I worried about you when you ran off that night.” His tone immediately mellowed. That electrifying charisma seeping across the airwaves, unsettling her resolve.

  “I um…” Mary flustered. He worried about her. What should she say? Perhaps calling was a mistake.

  “Are those men still chasing you, Mary? Do you need assistance?”

  “They are. I’m in a terrible jam. I suppose you have seen the news reports on TV?”

  “I have, but that is of little consequence. I know what you are truly capable of, and I can help you. Where are you, Mary?”

  “I’m in Brighton, but I really just need…”

  “I’m coming to get you, stay where you are.”

  “It’s just that I need help with the water crisis…”

  “We can discuss everything when I get there. Now give me the address.”

  “You can’t drive to this address, even the deliveries have to be barrowed over from…” She felt the last of her willpower ebbing away. “I’ll meet you at the Pavilion.”

  Mary heard Karan growling orders to his driver. An estimated time of arrival was set, and Mary hung up the phone. Stunned by her own ineptitude, she sat watching the light fade out in the lanes below. Why did I let him take control like that? I don’t need a man to protect me. All I need is for Dan to find Grampy’s leverage over the government. Her eyelids fell, and her spine crumpled. But I am so tired.

  The thumping of safety clogs on stair treads shook her from her drowsiness.

  “Did you make yourself some tea?” Cath said, a picture of cheerfulness. She kicked off her clogs and launched herself onto the settee.

  “No but thank you. Cath, do you think Will would look at a piece of jewellery for me? I take it you still meet up in his shop before driving home together?”


  “Of course, he wouldn’t mind. You know how fond he is of you. Did you want to go now?”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind. I know you must be knackered.”

  “Wear us old ‘uns out first.” Cath dragged herself up and retrieved her clogs. “Come on.” Pulling Mary up from the chair by the window, she led the way back down into the shop.

  Mary helped herself to a couple of bottles of water and a flapjack, at Cath’s insistence, and then left the store front while Cath locked up. Linking arms, they strolled through the diminishing crowds, heading north towards Will’s jewellery shop.

  Will was switching off lights in the windows and stowing the last trays of diamonds in the strong room when they arrived. Cath rapped on the door and waved at him through the glass. His delight and amazement upon seeing Mary was evident in his expression. Simple British manners stopped him from enquiring about the negative publicity making her a local celebrity, but Mary could sense his inquisitive nature simmering beneath the surface. Will greeted her with an awkward hug and then re-locked the door behind them.

  “I told Mary that you wouldn’t mind assessing a piece of jewellery. That’s okay isn’t it?” Cath said, flinging a glare to her husband that told him to cooperate without a murmur.

  “Yes, certainly. Happy to help. Pop it on this cushion if you will.” Will switched on a spotlight and angled the articulated stand of a mounted magnifying glass over the brooch. Inverting the piece on the velvet pillow, he scrutinised every inch of the metal.

  “Definitely gold, I’d say twenty-two carats, but no hallmarks.”

  “Which means?” Mary said.

  “Which means it was probably made prior to nineteen-twenty. It’s not a commercial piece either. Looks bespoke.” He turned it over again. “Is that…lambda?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “And the jewel? Is it Agate? Jet?” Mary said.

  Will moved the magnifier and took a powerful hand lens out from his pocket. Leaning into the light, he twisted the brooch until he could discern the facets clearly. Will touched his finger to the jewel.