Crowns and Codebreakers (15 page)

‘We have to warn Minnie and Piotr,’ she whispered. ‘Marcus is headed towards them.’

‘Marcus?’ Andrew glowered at the back of the wooden board. ‘I never liked him, not from the moment I laid eyes on him.’

‘Shh.’

He was parallel with them now. If he glanced in their direction, he would see them clinging to the back of the sign.

Flora willed him to carry on walking, not to look. She clung tighter to the splintery wood of the struts, desperate not to make the slightest sound.

Marcus walked right past.

As soon as he was twenty metres away, they dropped down on to the grass without a sound and tiptoed to the far side of the board, out of sight.

Flora scrabbled in her bag. Book, keys, purse – she was feeling all the wrong shapes. Then her fingers felt something smooth and hard – phone! She pulled it out and texted rapidly. Send!

She just hoped Minnie got the message in time to get out of there.

Inside the warehouse, Minnie and Piotr stood in the middle of the room of demons. All around, from the shelves, blank eyes stared back, knotted hair rose in stiff spikes, faces slashed with gouged marks or pierced with iron and bronze watched them.

‘How long has this been going on? Femi, how many times have you carried messages?’

She looked at the small boy. He looked down at the ground. He bit his knuckle. ‘Lots. I don’t know how many,’ he whispered.

So, it wasn’t just the head of the king that had been smuggled into the country. There were artefacts and objects all around them that didn’t belong in a dark, dingy warehouse. It wasn’t right. ‘Where do they all come from?’ she asked.

Femi looked down at the ground. ‘Bad men,’ he whispered.

‘It’s a network,’ Piotr said. ‘It must be to have moved so many objects. Men in Lagos steal the art and send it here. Then Femi carries a message to tell Marcus where and when to collect it. Marcus makes money when he sells it on.’

Femi nodded. ‘The men are very happy when I take back my case.’

‘Because it’s got money in it?’

Minnie didn’t wait for a reply. She had noticed something at the end of a shelf. An object wrapped in cloth. Cloth she had seen before, at the railway station.

She walked towards it, her hands held out. She grasped it. It was surprisingly heavy for something so small, like carrying a jug full of water. She lifted it over to an empty steel table. ‘We need the evidence for Jimmy,’ she said. ‘I’m going to photograph everything, then he’ll have to listen to us.’ She pulled out her phone and glanced at the screen. The missed call from Gran was still there. And a text. From Flora. She gasped.

‘What is it?’ Piotr asked.

‘Marcus is on his way!’

‘We have to get out of here!’ Piotr turned back the way they’d come.

‘Wait!’ Minnie said. ‘I need to photograph this.’

‘There’s no time!’

‘Wait!’ she said again. She moved aside the waxed cloth, like unwrapping a yearned for present, careful not to bump or jolt the thing underneath.

Piotr was at her side. ‘Minnie, we have to get out of here.’

Femi watched the doorway anxiously.

‘I’ll be one second,’ Minnie said. She knew Piotr was right. There was no time. But she couldn’t just walk out of here without any evidence. This had to end now.

The cloth fell back and revealed the head beneath. The metal was flaked with shades of brown, amber, copper, black, like skin reflecting sunlight. The cheeks were marked, corduroy ridges running straight down: the scars of old cuts that decorated the king. She could imagine blood running down the king’s face, him biting his lips together to stop from crying out as the marks were made. She held his cheeks in the palms of her hands, her thumbs resting either side of his beetle-wing nostrils. The beaded crown rose high above his forehead.

‘What are you doing?’ Piotr said. ‘Leave it. We have to go.’

But they were too late. They all heard the sound of a key sliding into the front door.

Piotr and Minnie looked at each other in horror. Femi ran from the room, back into his little bedroom and closed the door.

They were on their own and about to get caught.

Unless they found a way out.

Minnie scanned the room. There was no other exit. The windows were all covered.

Hiding?

There were no cupboards or beds to hide under – just shelves of weird heads and costumes.

‘The masquerades!’ she hissed at Piotr. She flung the waxed fabric back over the king’s head and raced towards the crocodile costume.

Piotr understood. He headed for the reeded rainbow devil.

The crocodile was enveloped in a long straw skirt that reached down to the ground. Minnie parted the straw, as though pulling aside a curtain, and ducked inside. It was a tight squeeze. She crouched there and let the straw fall back into place.

She heard rustling as Piotr slipped inside the rainbow spirit.

Minnie smelled sweat and warm grass. Her nose tickled. She forced back a sneeze.

‘Femi!’ an angry voice called from the corridor. ‘What have I told you about going into the storage space?’

Then there were footsteps coming closer.

‘The light is on. And things have been moved.’

Minnie heard a door open slowly. Then Femi’s voice, so soft she could hardly hear. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t listen, hmm? Is that it? What happens to little boys who don’t listen?’ the man’s voice had a steely edge. Minnie recognised Marcus’s voice at once.

‘Demons eat him.’

‘That’s right, the demons will eat him. The masquerades will wake and wonder who it was that roused them from slumber. They hate to be woken. They’re crotchety at the very best of times. One of them might just decide that there’s nothing more satisfying for breakfast than an irritating small boy. Then,
chomp, chomp, chomp
, no more Femi.’

Minnie peered through the straw. Femi was slumped miserably – his head hung low and his shoulders were clenched right to his ears.

The poor boy. Stuck in here, in the dark, frightened all the time. And all for money, for the profit they could make from selling stolen art. It wasn’t right. It was pathetic to frighten a child like that. Pathetic and wrong.

Minnie clenched her fists.

The grass skirt rustled.

Femi gasped.

‘What?’ Marcus asked.

‘The masquerades are waking,’ Femi whispered.

‘Nonsense,’ Marcus said.

Did his voice waver? Minnie was sure she’d heard fear there, just for a second.

She knew he was a man with a love of words. A man given to wild ideas. Was he really only trying to scare Femi? Or was a tiny part of him scared of the masquerades too?

She deliberately rustled the skirt again.

Femi burst into tears. She’d have to apologise to him later.

Marcus grabbed the boy and shoved him towards the crocodile. ‘See what it is. It’s probably just a mouse. Go, take a look.’

Minnie grabbed the wooden bar that ran up to the crocodile’s head and straightened up.

The whole costume rose off the ground. The leering jaws of the crocodile clattered above her head.

Femi screamed and ran towards the door.

Marcus stepped back. ‘Who are you? Who’s there? I don’t believe you’re real. I don’t.’

Then the rainbow spirit got to his feet. The huge horns on the top of his head scraped against the ceiling tiles.

Marcus screamed. He backed away.

But Femi had slammed the door; Marcus was alone with the demons!

The rainbow spirit took a step forwards. Minnie found a lever that operated the crocodile’s mouth. Its jaws rattled like dry bones.

Marcus’s face was drained pale. Sweat glistened on his forehead.

Minnie clattered the crocodile’s jaw again. She stepped left and right, herding Marcus in a fearful dance. Piotr did the same, both of them closing in, penning him in.

Marcus raced desperately to a window. They were shut tight. He wheeled around, looking for anything to use to protect himself.

He reached wildly for the objects on the nearest shelf: he grabbed and dropped a wooden mask; he grabbed and dropped a metal bowl; he grabbed a steel sword –

And didn’t drop it.

He turned to face the two masquerades.

He pointed his sword right at Minnie. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ he said. ‘Or, I swear, I’ll use this.’

Sylvie was watching the world race by a little too fast. The police commissioner was listening to the music swelling from the speakers and paid no attention to the passengers in the back seat.

Sylvie did not like this journey one bit. She didn’t know where they were going or why.

She looked around for clues. They were heading out of town, in the direction of the hospital. Why would this woman be taking them there?

‘How well do you know the police commissioner?’ Sylvie hissed to Auntie, who was looking more confused than frightened.

‘Oh, me and Anthea Swift had a very long conversation once,’ Auntie said.

Something about that sentence caught Sylvie’s attention, like a fish catching on a line, pulling it taut.

Swift.

That was the name Flora had mentioned earlier. Not Speedy. Not Quickly. Swift Limited.

The company behind the art smuggling ring.

Suddenly so many things fell into place. The reason why no proper police investigation had taken place. Why Auntie hadn’t heard from Jimmy at all. Someone in the police department was making sure it wasn’t investigated. And that someone was driving them away in a car.

Sylvie gestured to Auntie, tapping her thumb to her palm, keeping her hand low, out of sight. Would Auntie understand? Would she know what Sylvie was trying to signal?

Auntie seemed to get it. She patted herself down gingerly. Then she reached gently into her handbag which was next to her on the seat. She pulled out a phone and slipped it to Sylvie.

Well done, Auntie!

Sylvie needed to text for help. If she called, Anthea would be on to her in a second.

Could you text 999? Sylvie had no idea.

The best person to text would be Jimmy, but she didn’t know his number. She didn’t know Flora’s either.

She had a horrible realisation that she was going to
have to text someone who was already on Auntie’s phone. There weren’t going to be many options.

She pressed a button on the keypad.

The phone beeped!

‘What was that?’ Anthea asked.

Argh! Auntie hadn’t switched off her keypad sounds. Who did that? Old people.

‘What was that beep?’ Anthea demanded again, craning her head, looking at them in the rear-view mirror.

There was no choice. Sylvie was just going to have to type fast and furious and hope she got the message away in time.
Here goes nothing
, she thought.

HELP
, she typed –
beep, beep, beep, beep
– ‘in pcs car. S.’
Beep, beep, beep, beep
…

‘What are you doing?’ Anthea yelled.

Sylvie clicked Minnie’s number and hit ‘Send’.

Anthea pulled hard right into a lay-by. The car stopped. Sylvie yanked the door handle. It wouldn’t open! Child locks. She leaned over Auntie and grabbed the handle on her side. Locked too!

Anthea was out of the car. She wrenched open Sylvie’s door, reached in, snatched the phone and threw it into the road.

A lorry rolled right over it and crushed it to smithereens.

‘My phone!’ Auntie yelled.

‘That’s the least of your worries.’ Anthea slammed the door.

Sylvie cradled her wrist. It hurt.

This was scary now.

Anthea got back into the driver’s seat and edged the car back into the lane of traffic. She smoothed her hair flat in the rear-view mirror and dabbed at her lipstick with her index finger. She looked cool and poised again.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that wasn’t very clever. Not very clever at all.’

Sylvie pressed herself into the leather seat. She couldn’t get far enough away from the woman in the front.

Auntie leaned forward. ‘That phone was a gift from my son!’

‘All I wanted was a chat,’ Anthea said, ignoring Auntie completely, ‘and you had to go and pull a stunt like that.’

‘A chat about what?’ Sylvie said fiercely.

Anthea’s red slash lips frowned for a second. ‘You know what about. There’s no point pretending. You took something. An item of clothing. My fool of an associate left some embarrassing evidence that I would like back.’

Sylvie shook her head. ‘I’ve nothing of yours,’ she said.

‘It will do you no good. Swift Limited is being cleared as we speak. In an hour there will be nothing there to find. But I would like the T-shirt back, just to be certain. You were in the dry cleaner’s. You took it. I want it back.’

The dry cleaner’s? Sylvie had never been anywhere near it. She hadn’t even seen the T-shirt.

But she knew who had.

Flora.

Anthea thought that she was Flora. Anthea was driving the wrong twin!

Andrew and Flora watched Marcus go into the warehouse. They waited anxiously for Minnie and Piotr to come sprinting towards them.

But there was nothing.

Then from inside the building came the sound of screams.

‘He’s hurting them!’ Flora shrieked. She bolted to the front door and tugged hard at the handle, but it was locked from the inside.

Andrew was at her side, both of them pulling the door, rattling it in its frame. It didn’t budge.

She banged the door with the flats of her palms. ‘Let us in! Let us in!’

Andrew pulled her away. ‘Flora! Let’s try the back.’

Just then the door opened.

They looked up, then down.

A small boy was looking back up at them. They’d found the peanut boy!

‘Have you come to stop the demons?’ he asked in a small voice.

‘Yes,’ Andrew said firmly. ‘We have.’

‘Good, because Uncle Marcus has got a sword. But I don’t think swords will work on demons, do you? And she’ll be angry if the demons hurt Uncle Marcus.’

Flora and Andrew stepped into the darkness of the warehouse.

Flora didn’t know how she was going to stop demons, but this shivering whippet of a boy needed her to try. So she was going to.