James Becker - The Messiah Secret

Fifteen minutes later, he’d finally eased up into a crouch and then sprinted the last few yards to the boundary fence. Then he’d walked through the woods back to his car, and waited for the last of the British Museum people to leave.

Darkness was falling as Carfax walked back towards the house. The cars had left, and no one seemed to be around. A solitary bat swooped through the gloaming. So far, so good, he thought.

Quickly, he made his way to the window he’d left open at the back of the house. He took one more look round and pushed the sash upwards. Or tried to. It took less than a second for Carfax to realize that somebody — obviously one of the team from the British Museum — must have spotted the open catch and locked it.

‘Bugger,’ he muttered, backing away and retracing his steps. He had come prepared, though. In the boot of his car he’d assembled a selection of tools that he hoped would be enough for him to slip the window catch if he found it locked.

Ten minutes later he was back at the window, a long thin chisel in his hand, which he slid up between the two sections of the sash window. He positioned it against the locked catch and applied sideways pressure. Nothing happened — the catch remained obstinately closed. He tried again, and then again, each time increasing the level of force on the tool, and each time with precisely the same result — the catch didn’t move.

Carfax swore again, more loudly this time. He’d chosen that window because, of all those on the ground floor, that one had the loosest catch. Finding a chunk of stone that had fallen from some part of the house he dragged it across to the window and stood up on it. Almost immediately he spotted the screw jammed into the catch, and knew he wouldn’t be able to force it from the outside.

Somebody must have guessed he’d been inside the property. He thought he’d covered his tracks, and had only taken a handful of the choicest pieces. Quickly he tried forcing the other windows in the back wall of the house, but he knew that all the other catches were stiff with rust and disuse. Within ten minutes he was certain he was wasting his time — none of the other catches had budged even a millimetre.

Grumbling to himself, Carfax gathered together his tools and equipment. His best option seemed to be a ladder that he could use to reach one of the first-floor windows. Hopefully he’d be able to force one of them. His only other choice was to break a pane of glass and open a window on the ground floor but then the police would get involved and he really didn’t want that.

There were a couple of pieces of really good Georgian silver somewhere in the house that he hadn’t found yet, and a tray made by Paul Storr that he guessed would have a five-figure price tag, so being able to get inside undetected was vital.

No, he’d just have to come back tomorrow with a ladder. He had a right to Oliver’s possessions, and he was going to make damn sure they came to him, not to any museum.

‘Nice place,’ Chris Bronson remarked as Angela parked her Mini outside Carfax Hall the next morning.

Despite being divorced, he and Angela had remained the closest of friends, talking every day on the phone, and had come to trust and rely on each other perhaps even more than some married couples. Bronson was hoping they might get back together as man and wife, but Angela was still cautious about committing to that, the painful recollection of their separation and divorce still fresh in her memory. He was doing all he could to make her change her mind.

He had taken a couple of days’ leave and had driven up the previous evening, after Angela had told him about the possible intruder at Carfax Hall. Angela said she’d feel a lot happier having him around, and he’d agreed to come immediately. It was, he hoped, a sign that she might be about to put the past behind her.

‘I’m afraid the house is virtually falling apart. All those lumps of stone’ — she pointed — ‘have fallen off the roof and the upper walls. That’s why we can’t park any closer. The building’s losing bricks and masonry like a snake shedding its skin. We reckon it’ll be bulldozed inside a year.’

‘That’s a shame. I suppose it’s just deteriorated too much to save.’

‘That, plus the fact that the ungrateful relative who’s actually inherited the place — he’s a second cousin twice removed or something like that, according to Richard Mayhew — has already applied for planning permission to build houses in the parkland.’

The front door was locked, so Angela rang the bell. ‘This is just a precaution,’ she said, ‘until we — or, to be exact, you — tell us we’re all imagining things.’

The heavy door swung open and Richard Mayhew peered out at them, looking the image of a museum curator, Bronson thought.

‘Oh, it’s you, Angela,’ he said, testily. ‘Hello, Chris. This is completely unnecessary, you know. Angela’s reading far too much into things.’

‘If you don’t mind, Richard, I’ll be the judge of that. In my experience, Angela rarely overreacts.’

Mayhew grunted, pulled the door wide open and stepped aside to let them enter the hall.

‘Thanks,’ Angela said, leading Bronson around the base of the main staircase and down a corridor towards the back of the house. ‘Thanks for backing me up like that. Richard’s one of those annoying people who always think they’re right.’

Bronson smiled at her. ‘If you say there’s a problem, there’s a problem, and I’m here to fix it for you. Or at least I’ll try to.’

Angela pushed open the door at the end of the short corridor and stepped through into the kitchen. ‘This is where I’ve been working,’ she said, indicating the old table partially covered in assorted china and ceramics.

‘You make coffee and tea for the chaps in here, do you?’ Bronson asked.

‘In their dreams.’ Angela put her bag at the end of the table. ‘If they want drinks, they make their own. But I am prepared to make you a coffee, if you’d like one.’

Bronson nodded. ‘While you’re doing that, let me take a quick look at that window.’

Angela plugged in the kettle and pointed towards a door on one side of the kitchen. ‘Down there,’ she said. ‘That corridor runs along the back of the house. The window we found unlocked was at the far end.’

Bronson strode out of the room. He wasn’t gone for long. Angela had only just finished making two mugs of coffee when he walked back into the kitchen.

‘Did one of you jam the catch with a screw?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I did. It seemed very loose, so I thought it was a good idea.’

‘I’ve found what look like fresh scratch marks on that catch. I think they’re recent because there are a couple of flakes of paint still attached to one of the scratches. It looks to me like somebody has tried slipping the catch with something like a Slim Jim — you know, a thin length of steel?’

Angela looked alarmed.

‘Well, someone’s been using something similar to try to get that window open,’ Bronson continued. ‘He’s been sliding a steel tool between the two parts of the sash window and trying to undo the catch. The marks are quite unmistakable. The good news is that the screw you jammed into the mechanism stopped him from doing it. The bad news is that I found similar marks on the catches of all the windows along that corridor, so it was obviously a very determined attempt to break in.’

‘Are you sure? I mean, couldn’t those marks have been there for some time?’

Bronson picked up his mug of coffee. ‘Not really, no. I reckon your intruder tried really hard to open the window with the loose catch, because there are more scratches on that than any of the others. He didn’t get anywhere, because you’d jammed it, so he tried all the other windows at the back of the house, then he gave up.’