The Hunt for Excalibur

10 Quagmire

At 9.45 a.m. sharp, Court Callany developed mild symptoms of acute appendicitis. Tony Hamish and his sister, Bekka, offered to call the ambulance or drive poor Court to the hospital, but he assured them he could drive the eight minutes to New Victoria.

“I will be fine,” he winced convincingly. “Probably nothing, but I had this once before, so I just want to make sure it is nothing serious. I will probably be back at work tomorrow, Tone. Please, don’t worry, alright?”

Bekka looked very concerned, chewing rapidly on the purple gum she permanently hosted between her jaws. “Are you sure, Court? I can drive you, love. No problem.”

“No, no,” he smiled faintly, as sick people often do, “I can get there just fine, Bekka. Thanks.”

“Well, call us when you know what is going on,” Tony requested, walking Court to his car. “If you need a day or two off, we can work out something. Just get checked out and let us know.”

“Appreciate it, mate,” Court replied. As he drove off, he saw Tony and Bekka grow smaller in his rear view mirror. Miraculously he appeared to be feeling better as he progressed, driving closer to home. “Remind me to buy you a big bottle of whiskey for being so accommodating, Tone,” Court smiled, “when I get rich overnight.”

The morning sun was dwindling over Glasgow, as if the heavens got a taste of Court’s skullduggery. As his car neared his home, he leaned forward and raised himself over the steering wheel to see if anyone was home before parking in his driveway. From where he stopped, the coast was clear. Still, he elected to be quiet, just in case Sue was awake. She usually took her sleep meds at nine and slept until Pam came home from work at one, but his wife was an impulsive creature. Not someone to set one’s watch to.

He clicked the lock of his car door shut as gently as he could. For once, the noisy cars passing in the street and dogs barking at pedestrians came as a godsend. The noises masked his stealth approach in opening the front door without detection. Slowly, Court traversed the living room and kitchen, down the corridor to see if Sue was asleep. To avoid her seeing him, he waited right outside their bedroom to listen for any telltale signs, but was happy to hear her light snoring.

Like a burglar in his own house, Court went down to the lower section of the house. Between a crawl space and an actual basement, the low concrete ceiling afforded him passage as long as he bent over a great deal. Arched like an old man’s burden, Court’s back occasionally scraped lightly against the cold cement where the household kept scraps, trinkets and gas bottles, mostly.

As a precautionary measure, Court was the only member of the family allowed to go down there. Never had the rule been so convenient, because this was where he safely stashed the items he had burgled from the Hall estate. That very burglary that cost Paul from the Pub his life. Court was so desperate for money that he felt less and less guilty about the way in which things turned out that night.

Besides, Rufus Hall was a murderer in his own right, clubbing the housekeeper to death when he discovered her part in the invasion. Both men who died were bad people, Court asserted. Even the dead accomplice was some sort of criminal for helping organize the burglary, right? No real losses to the world, then, he figured.

His nostrils threatened to blow as the dusty, moldy atmosphere oppressed his lungs. The smell of mud and decay permeated through the entire stretch of darkness that enveloped Court. His torch was the only light, apart from the ventilation holes covered with mesh that barely helped him see. Atop an old oil heater, Court found his hoard, wrapped in tarp. He collected the bundle and opened it to evaluate his impending sale. While pinching the flashlight between his thighs, he quickly wiped his perspiring brow and grabbed a dirty rag to give the items a slapdash polishing.

Court scowled. He remembered something bigger than the stuff he had accumulated. It was hard to put his finger on it exactly, but something was missing. Over and over he murmured his inventory. “Two cutlasses, one spear and a bendy knife. Two cutlasses, one spear and a bendy knife,” he whispered, trying to remember what else there was. “There was more. There was… more.” Between his looming appointment and his sleeping spouse, Court could not focus enough to recall what he was missing. In vain, he attempted to remember the events of that night in order to retrieve the information he was seeking. Nothing came, until the reeling movie in his memory came to the part where he ran like a man on fire to flee the scene.

“The belt thing! The sheath! Shit, where…?” he mumbled in the dark, fiercely rummaging around in the close vicinity, hoping to find the scabbard concealed by shadows. Court’s time was running out. In the dead silence of the musty little space, he could hear the watch on his arm ticking especially loud. Paranoia gripped him as his one hand turned up the muddy concrete under his feet, yielding nothing but dirt and glass.

Above his head, Court could hear the plumbing shiver, a sure sign that someone was flushing the toilet. His heart skipped a few beats.

‘Sue. Sue is up. Shit! Shit! Shit!’ he thought in panic. What could he do? No doubt she would see his car in the drive. He had to think up a plausible agenda quickly and some good back-up bullshit to explain the collection of antique weapons. ‘Or… you could just cancel your appointment with Alan Silver and pretend you came home to be with Sue.’

Court shook his head profusely. There was no chance that he was going to miss out on this deal. There was much to barter about and he regretted having not had the time to research the value of what he had in his possession. In the end, Sue would just have to accept that he came into some goods to flog and be content, he decided.

With a strong will, he bolted across the barely visible floor with its uneven slabs and sunken nooks. He heard his wife speak to someone and halted abruptly, listening. A man’s voice unfamiliar to him was in conversation with Sue, but Court could not betray his presence now. He had to wait. On the mother of pearl face of his watch, the arms threatened to reach eleven o’clock. Sweating like a rapist with his balls in a vice grip, Court slowly poked his head out from the small door that led into the laundry room.

Hearing Sue chatting away, he used the moment to close the small door behind him and head in the opposite direction to the front door. Through the kitchen, Court tiptoed with his heavy portable armory, straight towards the back door, where he unlocked the latch and left the house. Once outside, he first took a deep breath, surveying his surroundings before leaping over the trench of mud he dug a week before to fix the drainage pipe.

The driveway ran past the master bedroom, but was cut off from the front lawn by a tall picket fence, overgrown with ivy vines. ‘Good thing she is not in the bedroom. She would have seen me.’ For once, Court was grateful for his wife’s talent to babble on about little nothings for an alarmingly long time. She occupied herself and her caller, giving him time to put the car in neutral and push it out behind the emerald screen of ivy. He noticed that it was Father Hennessey calling on Sue, and no sooner had Court recognized him, before Sue invited him in.

‘Perfect!’ the mechanic turned thief cheered in his head. The front door closed and Sue would never know that he had been there. It was 11 a.m. on the dot, sending Court into a frenzy. With the merchandise in the back seat, he raced to Alan Silver’s establishment. There was no time to make excusing calls. He had to just get there. Overhead, the sky had significantly darkened. Glasgow looked its old self again — dreary and beautiful, angry and cold.

Court was no fool. He knew that haste could cost him dearly if he got caught by a traffic officer for speeding or reckless driving. Calming himself with the notion that he had what Silver wanted, he navigated the fifteen-minute drive to the pawnshop within the speeding limit. Late by a quarter of an hour, Court finally pulled up to the back of Alan Silver’s pawnshop.

They looked menacing, even by Glasgow standards. There were two of them, flanking Silver outside the back entrance of the shop. One looked like a Mediterranean bouncer and the other was an emaciated man in his mature years, looking sharp and cold. Both men wore Italian suits and elaborate jewelry, but not the kitsch rapper-style jewelry. Blancpain watches adorned their wrists and pure platinum cufflinks decorated their shirtsleeves. None of the three men looked amused at Court’s late arrival.

“My watch must be slow,” the gaunt man said as Court darted out of his car to apologize. His eyes narrowed as he regarded the perspiring local mechanic. “But wait, my watch is a Swiss masterpiece that costs more than your house, Mr. Callany, and it unlikely to be slow or fast.”

“I am so sorry,” Court huffed, laboriously dragging the wrapped items from the back seat. “My wife is very ill, and I had to tend to her first. That is what kept me.”

“How noble,” the gaunt man purred sarcastically. His German accent was prevalent under his English. “You caught me on a good day, Mr. Callany. Those weeping gods of self-pity that hang over your sick wife must have their blessed hands over you today.”

Court was offended, but he dared not utter a word in defiance. By the expression of toil on the reddened face of Alan Silver, Court could tell that he was very unsettled and nervous. If he could, the mechanic would abort his mission, but judging by the tension it would be a deadly choice.

Silver leered anxiously at the tarp parcel. “Is that the Hall items?” he asked plainly.

“Aye,” Court replied. “I had another piece, but I could not find it in time to make this appointment.”

The thin man scratched his clean shaved head, the skin wrinkling under the brim of his fedora. He sighed, “Could not find it? You leave antique artifacts lying about like undergarments?”

“No, of course not,” Court panted nervously. “As you can appreciate, I had to hide them pieces away, otherwise my family… my family… they do not know…”

“They do not know that you are a thief,” the man finished Court’s difficult statement. The words came out blunt, but somehow cut through the mechanic like Japanese steel. He could do nothing but nod like a fool, knowing that there was no other way of describing what he had become. With a sharp leer, the man addressed Court. “Well, thief, meet the hunters.”

“Please, gentlemen, let us go in?” the sweaty Alan Silver suggested, looking around frantically. “We can continue the transaction inside, away from prying eyes.”

The gaunt man nodded at his bodyguard and the huge man planted himself at the door, on the inside, to make sure that nobody could show up while the deal was underway. Better still, he could assure the safety of his employer, Major Johannes Rian, master collector of bladed weaponry of all eras.

Alan led the two men into a small, brightly lit office where he usually appraised prospective artifacts. Shelves lined the wall behind his chair, separated into four sections, filled with trinkets, ornate utensils, hand-carved clocks and the like. Court could not help but conclude that Alan Silver was far from the financial caliber of the men he had invited over. The Major introduced himself, as did Court, given that Alan Silver did not know more than Court’s first name and had him vouched for by a reliable businessman, Tony Hamish.

As Court laid out his stolen goods, he silently realized that he had made a terrible mistake. Perhaps it was the snide menace of the Major, or maybe the fact that Court had entered the jaded world of murder and larceny. All plausible reasons, however, Court’s sinking feeling may have come from the look on the Major’s face… and the black Swastika tattooed on his neck.