Will Adams - Newton’s Fire

Kieran tried the doors on the other side, but they were locked too. It was Pete who found the more practical approach. He clambered on to the soft top and tried to tear the fabric free from its moorings. But Redfern started up the BMW and shot it forwards up the grass bank until his bumper hit the Maltings’ front wall. Then he swung the wheel hard around and reversed back down, clipping the SUV before racing away. He turned sharply, accelerating across the car park with Pete still on his roof before screeching to an abrupt halt and sending him tumbling down the BMW’s bonnet and across the tarmac. Then they were off and away.

Walters climbed back into the SUV to give chase, but by the time he’d picked up Kieran and Pete, the BMW was nowhere in sight. They drove around for a little while in hopes of seeing it, but without reward. ‘Now what?’ asked Pete.

‘We need to find them,’ said Walters.

‘How?’

‘Maybe they left something back at Redfern’s place.’

‘What if one of his neighbours has called in the filth?’

‘Have you got a better idea?’

They went back, watched the entrance for fifteen minutes. No sign of the police. No sign of anyone. They parked in a guest slot and Pete soon had them inside. Redfern’s apartment was a mess, and they found little of any use. The smartphone on the desk made Walters curse, for they’d evidently got serious about covering their tracks. He pocketed it anyway; it would make it easy to identify Redfern’s contacts. He checked the drawers next, found paperwork for the rented BMW. It gave him an idea, though making it happen was way above his own pay grade. He took a deep breath then called his boss.

‘I don’t believe this,’ snapped Croke, when Walters had brought him up to speed. ‘I thought you were supposed to be good at this kind of thing.’

‘With respect, sir, we’ve been unlucky.’

‘Unlucky!’ scoffed Croke. ‘These people can do me damage . I want them found before that happens. I want them silenced and I want their copy of the papers destroyed. Am I clear?’

‘That’s why I called, sir. The thing is, Redfern’s BMW has SatNav. We should be able to track them through it.’

‘SatNavs are receive only,’ said Croke.

‘Most are, yes,’ persevered Walters. ‘But this is a rental. Rental companies often fit receive and transmit systems to monitor their fleet, recover stolen cars. The girl in the office here as good as told me they use a system like that, only they run it out of St Albans. They’d never give that kind of info to a nobody like me. But you seem to have some pretty influential friends.’

A beat or two of silence. ‘Okay,’ said Croke, grudgingly. ‘Give me Redfern’s licence number. I’ll see what I can do.’

In the back of the BMW, Rachel watched anxiously for pursuit. She couldn’t see anything, yet her heart kept pounding all the same. That man on the roof; the noise of him trying to tear his way through the fabric. And the look on his blond companion’s face when he’d seen the papers in her hand; she’d never before seen murder so plainly written on a human face.

She turned to face front, assuming that Luke and Pelham would be equally shaken. To her surprise, however, they both appeared almost calm. In the passenger seat, Luke was flicking between radio channels in search of bulletins from Crane Court, while Pelham was driving in characteristically negligent fashion, slouched in his seat with his legs splayed wide and his wrist on the wheel. Something in their manner proved contagious, and her own nerves began to settle.

They reached dual carriageway, headed west. The road’s surface had recently been re-laid, and it was so tacky from the sun that it sounded almost like driving through shallow water. Luke finally gave up his hunt for news and turned the radio down low. Relative silence gave Rachel the opportunity to brood and reminded her of how little she knew about these two. If they were to be fugitives together, she needed to learn more. On the other hand, she didn’t want to antagonise them with crude questions, so she leaned forwards between the front seats and turned to Pelham. ‘I bet you get asked this all the time,’ she said. ‘But where did you get your first name?’

‘The folks were Wodehouse fans,’ he told her. ‘How sick is that?’

‘He was a wonderful writer.’

‘So was Dickens. So was Tolstoy. No shortage of wonderful writers with cracking first names. I’d have made a great Leo, if you ask me. Big, king-like and extremely dangerous. But no, I get fucking Pelham.’

‘It could have been worse,’ she pointed out. ‘They could have been Bronte fans.’

He laughed and threw her an admiring glance. ‘So do you have a bloke, then, Rachel?’

Luke put his head in his hands. ‘Jesus, mate,’ he sighed.

‘A bloke?’ asked Rachel.

‘A man. A boyfriend. You must have come across the concept. Someone to rush home from work for, so you can do his ironing.’

‘Ah. A bloke . Then no. Not just at the moment.’

‘Outstanding,’ grinned Pelham. ‘Tell you what. When this business is all over and done with, how about you, me, Mozart and some moonlight? The chance of a lifetime, though I say so myself. I mean, how many Nobel laureates have you ever been out with?’

She looked at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve won the Nobel Prize?’ she asked.

‘Of course he bloody hasn’t,’ said Luke.

‘Maybe not technically,’ admitted Pelham, ‘but I assure you it’s just a matter of time. And this way you get to say you knew me when.’ He turned to face her again, letting the BMW drift alarmingly from their lane, so that Luke had to grab the wheel and course-correct them. ‘Come on. How about it?’

‘I’m really flattered,’ said Rachel. ‘But, honestly, I don’t think I could go out with a man called Pelham.’

‘Fucking parents,’ scowled Pelham. ‘I tell you something: that man Larkin knew what he was about.’

‘Hey!’ said Luke, holding up a hand for silence while turning the radio back up loud to catch a chaotic Crane Court press conference in progress, a crowd of reporters shouting out questions.

‘What’s in there?’ yelled one of them. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Then what’s with the HazMat suits?’

‘Purely precautionary, I assure you.’

‘Precautionary for what? Anthrax? A dirty bomb?’

‘Is this to do with the memorial service?’ yelled a woman.

‘The what?’

‘The Royal Family are going to parade past here on their way to the memorial service at St Paul’s on Tuesday night. Has this investigation got anything to do with that?’

‘No comment. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

The press conference ended in a bedlam of unanswered questions. A reporter summed up and handed back to the studio. Luke turned the volume back down. ‘A dirty bomb. Jesus. They’re not holding back, are they?’

‘You reckon they’ve found it?’ asked Rachel.

‘I reckon we won’t hear a peep if they have.’

‘No.’ She sat back and spread the Newton papers out on the rear seat beside her, read again the enigmatic note on the sixth page. ‘And you guys can’t think what it was that Ashmole might have left Newton?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know a thing about Ashmole, apart from that Dee connection,’ said Pelham. ‘At least, there is one thing — but you’ll think me terribly immature.’

‘More than for owning a Harry Potter costume?’ asked Rachel.

‘Ouch,’ laughed Pelham. ‘Okay. Ashmole sometimes published under a pseudonym.’

‘What’s so immature about that?’

‘I only remember because of the name he chose: James Asshole.’