Will Adams - Newton’s Fire

‘Our friends from earlier?’ asked Pelham.

Luke shook his head. ‘Different cars. And if they’re tapping our phones, I’d say police.’

‘How did they find us?’ asked Rachel.

‘Maybe they worked out Sous Ashmolean for themselves,’ said Pelham.

‘Then what are they waiting for?’

‘Reinforcements?’ suggested Luke. ‘A warrant?’ He turned to Olivia. ‘Is there a back way out?’

Olivia nodded. ‘There’s a fire escape upstairs. It leads onto the alley.’

‘Is it alarmed?’

‘I turned it off when we came in.’

‘I’ll go check,’ said Pelham. ‘You guys get everything together.’

Luke zipped Olivia’s laptop away in its case, pocketed the digital camera, went with Rachel to the door.

‘Come on,’ he said to Olivia.

‘No,’ said Olivia. ‘I’m staying.’

‘You have to come,’ begged Rachel. ‘These people are bastards.’

‘I don’t care,’ she said fiercely. ‘This is my museum. Damned if I’m going to let them run loose in here without being around to watch.’

Pelham came back in. ‘They’re out back too,’ he grimaced.

‘How many?’ asked Olivia.

‘I saw three. There could be more.’

‘Oh, hell,’ said Rachel. ‘We’re trapped.’

Croke sat in the back of the Range Rover as the NCT convoy sped west along the M4, passing other traffic in a blur. ‘The police won’t try to stop us, right?’ he asked Morgenstern.

‘We know what we’re doing.’

Croke nodded. Morgenstern had impressed him not just with his swift switch of focus to Oxford, but also with his willingness to carry on searching Crane Court merely to keep the media distracted. They reached their exit. Roads narrowed, traffic thickened.

A call came in on Morgenstern’s cell. He frowned as he listened, turned to Croke. ‘Someone inside the museum started to make a call, then hung up,’ he said. ‘And they just checked out the fire escape.’

‘They’re on to us.’

Morgenstern nodded. ‘Shall I send the police in?’

‘How long till we get there?’

‘Another four minutes. Maybe five.’

‘If anyone comes out, have them grab them. Otherwise they’re to hold off.’

He watched out the window as Morgenstern relayed the order. Sunday night in Oxford, everything closed, quiet, dead, the few pedestrians startled by the sudden rampage of their convoy, faces bleached by their headlights. They slowed before turning into Broad Street, not wanting to attract unnecessary attention, pulled up outside the museum. Croke got out along with everyone else. Morgenstern had hand-picked this team himself; with all the media still in London, there was no great need for him to stay covert. A few NCT men hurried around the museum’s sides, while others went down to the basement door. But Morgenstern and Croke and the remainder marched straight up the front steps. ‘What now?’ asked Morgenstern.

Croke shrugged. ‘We knock,’ he said.

The double rap on the front door sent a shudder through Luke and the others. ‘We know you’re in there,’ shouted a man. He sounded American. ‘Open up or we’ll come in anyway.’

They looked helplessly at each other. Only Olivia had anything to suggest. ‘The well,’ she said. ‘You’ll have hide back in the vault.’

‘They know we’re in here,’ said Luke. ‘They’ll find us.’

‘They know someone’s in here,’ countered Olivia. ‘They don’t know who or how many. If you three hide-’

‘You two,’ said Pelham to Luke and Rachel. ‘They saw me on the fire escape. Besides, even if I made it down the well, I’d never make it back up.’ He patted his gut regretfully. ‘Wages of sin, and all that.’

‘We’re not leaving you,’ said Rachel.

‘Yes, you are,’ said Pelham. ‘Olivia and I can credibly claim to be working on a new exhibition. That won’t wash if you’re found here too. And if they think you’re on the loose, they’ll treat us better from fear of you raising the alarm. Speaking of which …’ He scrawled a phone-number on a scrap of paper. ‘My sister,’ he told Luke. ‘She’s a lawyer and she’s fierce. Call her if you possibly can.’

‘Will do.’

Another knock on the front door, louder and more insistent. They hurried to the well. ‘How will we get back out?’ asked Rachel, staring down.

‘The rope, of course,’ said Pelham.

‘But we can’t leave it dangling there or they’ll be bound to see it. It’ll lead them straight to us.’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ said Olivia. ‘Just get down there.’ She turned and vanished back up the steps.

‘You won’t get anywhere looking like that,’ said Pelham, nodding at Luke’s filthy shirt. He stripped off his jacket and gave it to him.

‘Thanks, mate,’ said Luke. He felt Pelham’s wallet and car keys in the pockets, offered them back.

‘You’ll need them more than me,’ said Pelham. ‘Just call my sister.’

Something crashed against the front door. They were breaking their way in.

‘Quickly,’ said Pelham.

Luke zipped Pelham’s jacket inside Olivia’s laptop case to keep it clean, slung the strap over his shoulder, grabbed the rope and slid down fireman style, the rope rubbing hot against his palms. He swung inside the passage and helped Rachel in after him, then began hurriedly to rebuild the wall. Footsteps above. Olivia. The rope slithered upwards. A few moments later it tumbled down again, a plastic bucket knotted to its end so that it danced like a hanged man a foot or so above the water, clattering the walls. Despite everything, Luke couldn’t help but smile. Anyone looking down now would assume it was part of the feature.

The basement lights went out, leaving it pitch black. Rachel switched on the lamp but turned it away from the shaft so that it wouldn’t give them away. A minute passed. He heard footsteps running above, men yelling. The lights flickered back on. He had only one brick left to complete the wall, but each time he tried to fit it in, it pushed its neighbours out into the well. He muttered a soft curse and gave up.

Through the small remaining gap he could see the rope swinging in slow ellipses, like the weight of a pendulum. Anyone who looked down would be bound to notice. He reached out through the small gap, let the rope nudge his fingers, moderating its motion a little. It swung away again, then back, allowing him to slow it a fraction more. But then he heard footsteps above and men talking and he had no choice but to withdraw his hand and watch as the rope continued its gentle oscillation, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be seen.

Croke was first through the splintered museum door, but the NCT search and secure team quickly left him behind. Four of them went upstairs; the remainder ran down, checking doors as they went, shouting instruction at each other, turning on lights. A yell from the staircase. Croke and Morgenstern hurried to check it out. A massively built thirty-something man and a grey-haired woman were sitting side by side at a desk in a cramped office: Pelham Redfern and Olivia Campbell, to judge from the descriptions he’d been given. They were both wearing headphones attached to a single small handset, and both were doing their very best to look shocked.

‘What is this?’ protested the woman, taking off her headphones, getting to her feet. ‘What’s going on? Who are you people?’

‘Skip the bullshit,’ said Morgenstern. ‘We’re not in the mood.’

‘What are you doing here? How did you get in? You haven’t damaged my door, have you?’

‘You should have answered when we knocked.’