Authors: Jim Eldridge
The Last Enemy (9 page)
‘They’ll want to once we’ve talked to Guy.’
‘So, we tell them we don’t have it.’
‘That we lied to them?’
Lauren shrugged again. ‘Pierce Randall make their living by lying. It’s what they do. This way they’ll be getting a taste of their own medicine.’
‘Lauren, Pierce Randall kill people who cheat them.’
Lauren scowled deeply.
‘That woman annoyed me! The way she treated me! I wanted to wipe that smug look off her face by giving her something to think about. Anyway, are you satisfied now?’
‘About the fact we could end up dead?’
‘About Guy,’ said Lauren. ‘She said she’d be able to fix up a meeting with him.’
‘From his “secure and protected environment”,’ quoted Jake. ‘That sounds like he’s a prisoner to me.’
‘Yes, but he’s in their hands, not anyone else’s.’
They headed towards the nearest underground station. They were just nearing the entrance when a man stepped in their path.
‘Stop,’ he said curtly.
Lauren saw the glint of metal in the man’s hand.
‘Jake, he’s got a knife!’ she whispered.
‘Where is Guy de Courcey?’ demanded the man, and now Jake could hear his accent, a very guttural Spanish.
‘Guy?’ he echoed.
‘Do not try to run!’ snapped the man. ‘My men are right behind you.’
Jake looked round, and saw a very tall, muscular man standing behind them. One of his hands was in his pocket, the other bunched into a fist.
Jake turned back.
‘Look, we don’t know where Guy de Courcey is . . .’ he began.
The man scowled.
‘I do not believe you!’ He gestured back along the road. ‘You have just been to Pierce Randall.’
‘Yes, but . . .’ began Jake.
The man glared at him.
‘Get in the van!’ he snapped.
‘Van?’
Parked on the kerb was a small van with ‘HO Rentals’ painted on the side. A third man was sitting behind the steering wheel.
‘Listen,’ Jake said, angrily. ‘I don’t know what you think . . .’
‘Get in the van!’ repeated the man, his voice angrier this time. He pointed the knife towards Lauren. ‘And no shouting or she die.’
‘Look, we don’t know where Guy de Courcey is . . .’ protested Jake.
The man moved towards Lauren and placed the blade of his knife near her stomach.
‘OK,’ said Jake quickly.
Jake and Lauren climbed into the back of the van. There were no seats inside, just the bare metal of the floor. The two men climbed in after them and pulled the van doors shut. The leader said something in Spanish to the driver, and the van pulled away.
‘Listen,’ Jake appealed again, ‘neither of us know where Guy de Courcey is. We’re guessing you know him, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing this. But we’d never met him, or even heard about him, until the other day.’
‘Jake Wells?’ asked the man suspiciously.
‘Yes,’ admitted Jake.
‘Guy said he coming to England to meet you.’
‘You’re from Mexico!’ said Lauren with a burst of sudden realisation. She turned to Jake. ‘Remember, Guy told you he was in Mexico when Pierce Randall contacted him.’
‘Shh!’ snapped the man. He turned back to Jake. ‘Guy said he come to England to see Jake Wells and Alex Munro. Now Munro dead and Guy vanish. What you do with him?’
‘I haven’t done anything with him!’ said Jake, exasperated. ‘I didn’t do anything with either of them! Like I told you, I’d never even
heard
of Guy de Courcey before we were both locked up in the same cell by the police.’ Then he added, in the hope it might worry the men, ‘Who might even be tailing us, for all we know.’
The man ignored this, and insisted, ‘You lie. You know Guy before.’
‘No!’ said Jake.
The man turned to Lauren.
‘You know him?’
‘No!’ said Lauren defensively.
The man scowled, and muttered something in Spanish to one of the others.
‘
Sí
,’ grunted the second man, and he took a vicious-looking metal knuckleduster from his pocket and slipped it on the fingers of his huge right fist.
‘My friend going to break the bones in your face until you tell us where Guy is.’ He gestured to Lauren. ‘He start with her. He hurt her real bad.’
‘Look, if we knew where Guy was, we’d tell you!’ appealed Jake. ‘We don’t know! We went to the hotel where he told us he was staying . . .’
‘The Belvedere,
sí
.’
‘And he’d left. We got the impression he was being taken care of by the firm of lawyers that Alex Munro worked for, Pierce Randall. They’re the people you should be talking to.’
‘We talk to them. They say they don’t know.’
‘And neither do we!’
Suddenly the van braked hard, throwing them all off balance. Jake jerked forward, grabbed the man’s hand holding the knife and slammed it down hard. The man screamed as the blade sliced into his leg.
At the same time, Lauren swung her right hand up, bringing the heel of her hand sharply up under the nose of the man nearest her, snapping it and sending him reeling backwards with a yell of pain.
Jake slid across the floor of the van and kicked out hard at the rear doors. They sprang open. There was the blare of a horn as the vehicle immediately behind the van braked sharply. Jake and Lauren dived out, dodging through the traffic as they ran for the pavement. They threw themselves into the mass of people and darted into a side street, and then another, before finally stopping, out of breath.
They looked back. There was no sign of the Mexicans.
‘They don’t need to chase us,’ said Lauren. ‘If they know your name, they’ll know where we live.’
‘Yes, but next time we’ll be on our guard,’ said Jake. ‘And I’m hoping that we proved back there that we can’t be bullied.’
Their Tube journey home was spent in silence. Both Jake and Lauren knew it was not a good idea to start talking about what had happened to them in a train where their conversation could be overheard by other passengers. To talk about almost being abducted, and Mexicans with knives, could easily raise alarm. At the same time, neither of them felt at ease enough to engage in idle chatter about everyday things. As they exited Finsbury Park station, it was Lauren who spoke first, cutting off Jake.
‘We have to tell the police!’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ argued Jake. ‘Bullen seems convinced that I’m playing games with him. He’ll just think I’m doing the same again, and haul me in.’
‘But we have evidence! The van! OH Rentals. Descriptions of the three men!’
Jake frowned.
‘I’m still not sure. What I don’t understand is this business of Guy telling them he was coming to England to meet me.’
‘Maybe Alex Munro told him that was what was going to happen. Your name was in Munro’s diary, remember.’
‘But why didn’t Munro contact me?’
Lauren shrugged.
‘Who knows?’ She shuddered. ‘One thing’s for sure, Guy certainly mixed with some rough people in Mexico.’
‘He told me he was in prison there,’ said Jake. ‘Let’s hope there aren’t any more of his former cellmates walking around looking for him.’
‘What I don’t get is: why us?’ asked Lauren.
‘Because they think I’m connected to Guy in some way,’ said Jake. ‘Someone with a Spanish accent phoned me at the office before we went to see Sue Clark. He claimed to be Guy.’
‘You never told me!’ said Lauren accusingly. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I never got the chance to tell you about him, what with everything else going on. Anyway, I never spoke to him. Paul took the message.’
‘What worries me is, they’ll try again,’ said Lauren.
‘Maybe we really do need Pierce Randall on our side,’ Jake suggested. ‘I bet they know exactly what’s going on. Guy and Gareth missing. Everything that’s behind it. They always know.’
Lauren shook her head.
‘They won’t help us unless we give them the book, like we promised. And once they find out we forged it, they’ll . . .’
‘Kill us?’ said Jake.
‘Don’t joke about it,’ said Lauren.
‘Who said I was joking?’ snapped Jake bitterly.
‘There’s no need to have a go at me!’ retorted Lauren, stung.
‘I wasn’t!’
‘Yes, you were!’
Jake was about to snap back at her, when he stopped himself.
‘OK, it sounded like it, but I didn’t mean to,’ he said apologetically. ‘It’s just that . . . after what happened . . .’
‘Whatever’s going on, one thing’s for sure: Pierce Randall can’t be trusted,’ said Lauren grimly. ‘We know they’re only in this for what they can get out of it. If we want Pierce Randall, or anyone else, on our side, we need a bargaining chip. We really do need a book.’
Jake turned to Lauren, his face alight with inspiration.
‘No, we need
the
book!’ he said. ‘The Index! The reason Pierce Randall brought Guy back! That’s what this is all about!’
Lauren sighed.
‘We don’t know where The Index is.
No one
knows where The Index is.’
Jake smiled at her.
‘I think I do! It just hit me!’
Again, Lauren shook her head.
‘You’re dreaming, Jake,’ she said. ‘If The Index was that easy to find, Pierce Randall would have got hold of it by now. Or Gareth and MI5. Or every other organisation who’ve been looking for it.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Jake. ‘Ever since I met Guy and heard his story. And the answer’s only just hit me right now. Why did Pierce Randall bring Guy back to England?’
‘Because, like we said, his ancestor was quite likely given the
Journal
, and possibly The Index, for safe keeping.’
‘And where would those books have been kept?’
Lauren stared at him.
‘Jake, you’re not seriously suggesting . . .’
‘Yes, I am! In the library at de Courcey Hall in Kent.’
‘But the National Trust would have cleared the library out.’
‘Not necessarily. Have you ever noticed that in lots of these National Trust places, the libraries are still filled with old books that look as if they’ve been there for centuries?’ said Jake. ‘Say that was the case here.’
‘My God!’ breathed Lauren. ‘If it
is
. . .’ She looked stunned. ‘You surely don’t think it can be that simple? That The Index and the
Journal
could have been sitting there on the library shelves at de Courcey Hall all this time?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘But if The Index has been there all this time, why would Pierce Randall need Guy to get it? They’re powerful enough to be able to get it without him.’
‘Perhaps Pierce Randall has already searched the library but couldn’t find it. Plus, they probably don’t know what it looks like. Guy lived at the place. I reckon that they thought he might be able to pinpoint it for them. There could be a hidden compartment in the library that Guy might remember from childhood?’
‘So you think The Index might still be there at the hall?’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ said Jake.
As Jake and Lauren drove along the narrow winding lane that led to de Courcey Hall, Jake was desperate to believe this trip would lead them finally to the end of their long and painful quest. The Index, the list of places where every one of the Malichea books was hidden.
The car followed the twists and turns, until they rounded a final bend and saw the hall ahead of them.
It was massive. OK, not as big as somewhere like Buckingham Palace, and it wasn’t many storeys high, like some stately homes, but it was a rambling Tudor mansion with additional wings, all in the same black timber-framed style bending this way and that.
‘Wow!’ said Jake. ‘That is some house! It looks like it’s got . . . what . . . a hundred rooms? And one family lived here?’
‘Plus their servants. And guest wings for important visitors. Royalty arriving with all their attendants and servants. A place like this needed to be big.’
They drove past a single-storey gatehouse towards the car park.
‘It’s huge!’ murmured Jake. ‘It must have cost a fortune to maintain this place!’
‘It still looks like it did way back in Tudor times,’ said Lauren, bringing up an image of an old painting of the house on her iPhone.
‘Let’s hope the library is still the same,’ said Jake.
He followed the signs for the car park. There were just two cars already there, and an SUV.
‘Not many visitors,’ he remarked.
‘Damn!’ muttered Lauren.
‘What?’
She pointed to a sign that read: ‘Public opening hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.’