The Heretics Treasure

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Lawrence Kirby knew he was a terrible driver, but he didn’t generally care and he cared even less today. As he sat peering over the wheel of his bright yellow Smart Car and lurched and stalled his way towards the old family home eight miles out in the countryside, he was thinking about this guy, Ben Hope, who’d accosted him in his office. And about Morgan, and about the treasure. He wondered how the hell Hope had managed to track him down so easily.

Whatever it all meant, it scared the shit out of him. As he pulled in off the road, passed under the archway of trees and into the gravelled forecourt of Drummond Manor, he was wondering whether it was time to pack some stuff and take a holiday. Maybe take the sabbatical leave he’d cancelled the day he’d heard about Morgan’s death and bailed out of his Cairo trip.

He climbed the steps to the big stone manor house, fumbled for the key in his pocket and pushed open the heavy oak door. Every time he walked inside the huge stone-floored entrance hall, he had the same thought: how much he hated all the crap his father had insisted on displaying on the walls. The stuffed trophy deer heads always seemed to watch him wherever he went, and their antlers made spiky shadows at night that freaked him out. He couldn’t stand the sight of the crossed sabres and muskets gathering dust on the carved wood panels, either. On a velvet panoply over the fireplace were two big ceremonial Kukhri knives, left over from His Lordship’s days as an officer with the Gurkha regiment.

But the old man’s will hadn’t specified that his son, the new Laird of the manor, couldn’t just bung the offensive lot in a skip. And Kirby planned to do exactly that. He just hadn’t got around to it in the months since he’d inherited this rambling pile.

He dumped his briefcase in the passage, walked through to the kitchen and made himself a mug of instant decaf. Carrying the thin brown liquid through to the only one of the manor’s many reception rooms that he ever used, he gazed out of the window across the overgrown lawns behind the house. Beyond a stone wall and a row of trees, he could see the derelict agricultural buildings in the background. The place had been a working farm once but, ever since the old man had got frail and sick, everything had fallen into decay. Abandoned stacks of hay bales were mouldering and turning black in the rusty barn. And the slurry pit was sure to be attracting rats. It was becoming a health hazard. He’d have to tear the whole lot down.

That was Kirby’s last thought before he sensed a presence behind him and spun around in surprise to see two men striding fast towards him across the room. Two guns in his face. He dropped his coffee and let out a short scream. Fell to his knees.

Neither man spoke a word as they grabbed his arms, hauled him roughly to his feet and marched him out of the room and down the passage. He struggled and pleaded. ‘What do you want with me?’ As they frogmarched him across the hall, he glanced up and saw with a shock of horror that there was an empty space where one of the Gurkha knives had hung.

Oh Christ, they’re going to cut my head off.

‘What are you going to do to me?’ he screamed.

They ignored him and dragged him out of the front door. There was a white Suzuki mini-van sitting parked on the gravel outside. The back doors were open. The men shoved him towards it.

‘Where are you taking me?’

No reply.

All the strength had left Kirby’s legs and he was shaking with pure terror as they bundled him into the back. He slid across the bare metal floor, tried to scramble to his feet and whacked his head against the low roof. The doors slammed shut. There were no windows. Kirby was suddenly in darkness.

The kidnappers walked around the van’s sides to the cab, pulled open their doors and climbed in. They spent a moment making their pistols safe and securing them inside the tactical concealment holsters they were both wearing under their jackets. They didn’t speak, but shared the quiet satisfaction of a job cleanly and quickly executed. Now it was time to get out of here and deliver the package to the place outside Glasgow that their cell used as a safehouse. Neither man had any clear idea of the purpose of this job-they only knew that a call had come in from overseas the night before, and it was from someone their bosses obeyed instantly. It had also been put in no uncertain terms to them that to mess this up would mean severe punishment.

The driver twisted the key.

Nothing happened. The van was stone dead.

‘Fuck,’ he said in Arabic.

‘What’s wrong with it? It was fine a minute ago,’ said the man in the passenger seat.

The driver muttered another curse, reached down below the dash and yanked on the bonnet release mechanism. There was a dull clunk and the bonnet popped free of its catch and opened half an inch. He kicked open his door, jumped down from the van and walked around to the front.

The passenger watched through the windscreen as his colleague lifted the bonnet and disappeared behind it. He heard some noises, then nothing. He stuck his head out of the window. ‘Hurry the fuck up,’ he yelled in Arabic. ‘We’ve got to get moving.’

The bonnet crashed down with a clang that shook the van. The passenger looked, expecting to see his colleague wiping his hands and giving the thumbs-up-OK, sorted, let’s roll.

But there was nobody there.

He frowned, opened his door, climbed down. His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he walked around the front wing. He looked down and saw the driver’s legs sticking out as though he were lying on his back to work on the underside of the van.

‘Hey, what the fuck are you doing down there?’

But then he saw the legs give a violent, spasmodic twitch.

And he saw the blood that was pooling outwards from under the van and across the gravel.

After that, he saw nothing more.