The Messiah Secret - James Becker [19]
The man made his way down the main stairs to the ground floor and walked into the huge reception room on one side of the front hall. He strode across to the closest of the tall windows and cautiously looked out, checking that there were no cars left on the gravel parking area.
Then he nodded, pulled a nylon bag out of his pocket and opened it on the floor near the door. He walked over to the closest packing case and started pulling out the contents, his movements urgent, but careful and concentrated. The room was enormous and the number of boxes and packing cases huge.
Within fifteen minutes he’d selected about a dozen high-value silver objects and placed them in his bag. Ten minutes later he climbed out of a ground-floor window at the back of the house, and walked unhurriedly over to the boundary fence on one side of the property, where he’d parked his car earlier that afternoon.
With any luck, he thought, he could probably repeat the operation three or four times that night, and then do the same thing tomorrow. If he picked his prizes carefully, he’d be able to make a tidy sum from their sale. It wouldn’t be anything like as much as that devious old bastard Oliver had promised him the last time they’d talked, but it would be a big help to his bank balance.
But the antiques he was stealing were only a part of the story. The big prize, the thing he’d really like to get his hands on, was a few words written on a tattered piece of parchment. He’d never seen it, or even met Bartholomew – the old man had died several years before he was born – but Oliver had always been going on about it, back in the days when he’d been a welcome guest at Carfax Hall. He knew that Bartholomew had been incredibly secretive about the relic, but it had to be somewhere in the house.
Once he’d stashed his acquisitions in the car, he’d start searching in all the places that Oliver might have missed – and there were plenty of them.
He reached his car, popped open the boot and carefully placed his prizes inside it. He pressed the lid closed carefully, making as little noise as he could, locked it and then headed back towards the old house.
‘Up yours, Oliver, you mean old bastard,’ he muttered, as he climbed over the boundary fence again. It was a still, clear moonlit night, and the house and its belongings were all his.
9
Jesse McLeod looked across the table at the man sitting opposite him.
Killian had worried him from the moment they first met. It wasn’t the man’s general appearance he found intimidating, just his eyes – black, dead eyes, seemingly able to pick apart your very soul and lay bare your thoughts. And there was a kind of suppressed energy about him, like a tightly coiled spring, that always seemed about to explode into sudden violence, probably extreme violence.
But McLeod knew he had something Killian wanted, and this gave him a powerful lever to use in his negotiations. He didn’t see why Killian would baulk at the fairly modest payment he had in mind. And the consequences of him not paying up were real serious. McLeod knew that Killian would realize this.
‘I want it now,’ Killian growled, referring to the information McLeod had accessed.
‘I can give it to you right here, on a memory stick,’ McLeod suggested.
‘You have it with you? On your laptop?’
McLeod nodded. ‘It’s right here,’ he confirmed, patting the leather bag beside his chair. ‘There’s just the matter of payment to discuss.’
Killian’s face clouded. ‘I’ve been paying you a retainer for two years. Why do you think this information entitles you to more?’
‘I think when you see it you’ll realize why it’s so important.’ McLeod was choosing his words with enormous care. ‘It’s directly related to the previous data I gave you – that stuff about the “treasure of the world” – you remember? That article in the magazine about the old guy in England, and how he thought he’d finally worked out where the treasure had to be hidden?’
Killian stared at McLeod for a few seconds, then nodded