The Messiah Secret

17

6 p.m. Angela and her museum colleagues had left, and Carfax Hall was completely silent.

Chris Bronson walked through to the kitchen and clicked the switch on the electric kettle. Coffee, he knew, would help him keep alert. He’d have no trouble staying awake until well after midnight — he’d always been a late bird — but staving off boredom and sleep in the early hours of the morning would be more difficult.

He’d establish a routine, and prepare the house for his coming vigil. At night, sound travels further and more clearly than during the day because of the absence of other noises to interfere, so there were things he needed to do. The first was to go round the entire house and open every door to allow him to enter any room as silently as possible — a creaking hinge would be an obvious giveaway.

He started on the ground floor, checking that both the front and back doors of the house were securely locked. Then he walked through each room in turn and opened all the internal doors wide. Some he had to prop open because they were fitted with self-closing hinges, but there were plenty of boxes he could use.

He walked up the wide staircase and repeated the process on the first floor, and then on the attic floor above that. Back on the ground floor, he checked that the cellar doors were also open. There were two doors, one leading to a wine cellar that appeared to have been emptied of its contents, and the other to a general-purpose cellar full of various sorts of household junk, and which also housed a large and clearly elderly central-heating boiler.

Finally, because he hadn’t got a torch, he switched on the hall, staircase and main upper corridor lights so he’d be able to move around without walking into doors or tripping over things. Those lights would be enough to let him see where he was going, but hopefully wouldn’t raise the suspicions of anyone who’d tried to force the rear windows.

That done, he walked back into the kitchen, made a mug of coffee and sat in the armchair in a corner of the room. He’d found a handful of paperback novels in the library, hidden away amongst the collection of weighty and dull-looking leather-bound tomes. He picked a thriller and started to read.

He’d barely got beyond the first page when he felt his mobile start to vibrate in his pocket.

‘I’m in my room at the pub,’ Angela announced. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Of course I am. Don’t worry about me.’

‘I do — that’s the trouble,’ Angela said with a sigh, and Bronson couldn’t help but feel a little bit pleased. ‘We agreed you’ll call every hour, on the hour. If I’ve not heard from you by five past each hour, I’ll call you. And if I can’t get through to you by ten past, I’ll be calling the cavalry, so make sure you answer — OK?’

Bronson glanced at his watch. ‘Agreed. It’s six fifty now, so let’s consider the seven o’clock call made. I’ll talk to you at eight.’

‘Take care, Chris.’ There was a brief, rather strained pause, and Angela rang off.

Bronson drained the rest of his coffee and stood up. It was time to check the house. He wandered through all the downstairs rooms, his feet making almost no sound on the mainly stone floors, and looked out of the windows. Then he climbed the stairs and did the same thing on the first floor, looking inside each bedroom and making sure that the various paintings and pieces of furniture were still there. Apart from a few rabbits hopping around in the long grass at the back of the house, the estate seemed to be deserted. Bronson hoped it would stay that way.

His evening soon settled into a routine. At quarter past and quarter to the hour, he walked all the way through the house, checking every room, which took him about ten minutes. And on the hour, he rang Angela’s mobile.

At ten he called Angela, made another cup of coffee, drank it, and then began his usual patrol. He saw nothing until he looked out of one of the windows in the bedroom at the end of the house, a window that offered a good view of the woodland that ran alongside the estate’s fence.

Then, in the soft darkness that surrounded the house, a sudden movement caught his eye.

Jonathan Carfax stopped just inside the tree-line at the edge of the wood, panting slightly from his exertions. He’d had to bring a long ladder — it needed to be able to reach the first floor of the house — and it was a lot heavier than he’d expected. In fact, he would have to make two journeys — once he’d carried the ladder to the house he would have to go back for his bag of tools and a couple of other bags to hold his booty.

He rested the ladder against a tree, well out of sight of the house, then moved forward a few feet. There were no cars parked in front of the property, which presumably meant that the British Museum people had all gone for the day. Then he looked more closely at the house itself, and spotted a dim glow in both the upstairs and downstairs windows. Somebody had obviously left a light — maybe two or three lights — switched on.

He wasn’t going to go near the house if there was anyone still inside and there was one way he could check this out. He still had the telephone number of Carfax Hall, a hangover from the days when he’d been a welcome guest there, before Oliver had turned against him.

Pulling his mobile from his pocket, he dialled the number. Faintly, across the intervening distance, he could hear the sound of the house phone ringing. If anyone was in the property, he was sure they’d pick it up.

Watching from the upstairs bedroom window, Bronson jumped slightly as the unexpected sound of a ringing phone echoed from the hall downstairs. The only person likely to phone him was Angela, and she’d call his mobile, not the house phone. Just to check, he pulled out his Nokia and looked at the display. His battery showed a full charge, and the signal strength was near maximum.

It was most likely a wrong number or a cold call, he decided. He’d let it ring. He looked again to the edge of the wood, where he’d seen the movement.

A minute later, the ringing stopped and the house fell silent.