The Cross

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Ridings, near Guildford

Adjoining the seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom, twelve-and-a-half-million-pound mansion, with its five acres of sweeping grounds comprising tennis courts, indoor pool, gazebo, stables and helicopter pad, was a comfortable little former coach-house that for the last six years had been the home of the middle-aged couple employed by the cabinet minister Jeremy Lonsdale to look after the place when he wasn’t around. Which, as the great man could more often be found enjoying the bachelor lifestyle at his Kensington apartment or lounging around his Tuscan villa than at his English country pile, was most of the time.

Sharon and Geoffrey Hopley had spent that evening by the woodburner in the cosy sitting room of the coach-house, discussing the problem of their missing employer. As the days passed and the anxiously-expected phone call never came, they’d been growing increasingly worried. The visit from the police had only deepened their anxiety. Had something awful happened to Mr Lonsdale? And — more to the point, since Sharon and Geoffrey were much more attached to Castor and Pollux, Lonsdale’s pair of great Danes, than they were to the man himself — what would happen to their jobs and their home if he never returned?

Another subject of discussion that evening, over mugs of Horlicks before bed, had been the unexpected delivery earlier in the day. The Fed-Ex drivers who’d unloaded the three large boxes had almost broken the hydraulic lift of their truck with the weight of them.

The typed instructions attached to the delivery note had been strict and clear: the items were to be stored in the mansion’s basement under lock and key, and on no account was anyone except Mr Lonsdale to open them or tamper with them in any way.

Two of the boxes were about the same size, about six feet long. The third was closer to seven, much wider, and weighed almost twice as much. Getting them down into the basement had been a grunting, straining, gut-busting endeavour. In the end, they’d had to lower them in with ropes via the disused Victorian-era coal chute, and when it was done, Geoffrey was talking about suing Fed-Ex for the pain in his back.

Tucked up in bed sometime after midnight, Sharon rolled over and nudged her husband on the shoulder. ‘Psst. Psst. Are you awake?’

‘No,’ he grunted in the dark.

‘I can’t sleep. I was thinking—’

Geoffrey propped himself up against the pillow and rubbed his eyes. ‘What is it now?’ he moaned. ‘Christ, my back.’

‘Maybe we should tell the police. About that delivery. I mean, maybe it could, you know, help them find Mr Lonsdale, maybe.’

Geoffrey was wide awake now. ‘It’s just something he must have ordered before he went off,’ he said irritably. ‘You saw the instructions. He won’t be very happy when he comes back and finds that we’ve opened his private mail.’

‘Those things aren’t just any old mail. And he’s not coming back, and you know it.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say that.’

A silence; then Sharon said, ‘Those boxes could be coffins, you know.’

Geoffrey reached out and clicked on the bedside light, turned to stare at his wife in bewilderment. ‘Coffins! What the hell makes you think they’re coffins?’

She shrugged. ‘Something creepy about them, if you ask me. Why, what do you think’s in them?’

‘Crates of wine, perhaps, or antique furniture. Or artwork? Mr Lonsdale collects artwork, as you know.’

‘Too heavy for artwork. And if it was wine the boxes would be marked “fragile”. No markings on them at all. Don’t you find that a bit odd?’

‘I don’t know, Sharon, and I don’t care. Can we please get back to sleep now? Honestly.’ Geoffrey turned the light back out and buried his head in his pillow.

For the next few minutes, the only sound in the dark bedroom was the gentle rasp of Geoffrey’s snores. Sharon felt herself getting drowsy. Maybe Geoffrey was right, was her last thought as sleep came down like a curtain.

Then, in their kennel outside, Castor and Pollux suddenly began to bark furiously.

Sharon sat bolt upright in the bed. ‘Geoffrey!’ she whispered. ‘Listen!’

‘For God’s sake, it’s probably just a fox,’ he muttered.

As suddenly as it had begun, the chorus of barking ended in a high-pitched whimper. Sharon tore the covers off her and scurried to the window. She could see nothing outside. ‘Someone must be out there.’

Geoffrey nodded, suddenly alert and panic-stricken. ‘I’ll get the shotgun.’ There had been burglaries in the area recently, and he’d taken to keeping the old side-by-side behind the door. Sharon clung to his arm as they crept downstairs and ventured out into the cold night air.

‘Who’s there?’ Geoffrey yelled in a quavering voice, sighting the shotgun down his torch beam as he swept it left and right at the barns, the gazebo, the helicopter hangar. No reply. A lowlying freezing mist drifted around the house, making them shiver.

‘Who’s there?’ Geoffrey repeated. ‘Whoever you are, I have a gun.’

As they passed the kennels, the torch beam landed on the cowering shapes of Castor and Pollux. The two dogs were pressed against the wire mesh as far away from the house as they could get, their tails between their legs, quivering and whining with subdued fear.

‘Look at them, Geoffrey. What the—’

‘Never mind the dogs. Look at this,’ Geoffrey whispered hoarsely, shining the torch on the coal shute trapdoor that led down to the cellar. It was open. The concrete cellar floor was covered with scattered pieces of ripped cardboard and splintered wood. All three crates had been smashed apart.

‘Someone’s broken into them,’ Sharon gasped, gripping her husband’s arm. ‘Oh my God. We have to call the police.’

Geoffrey stared at the debris a moment longer. ‘Wait a minute. It looks like … no, it can’t be.’

‘Can’t be what?’ she asked him in terror.

‘Those crates haven’t been broken into. They’ve been broken out of. They’re burst open from the inside.’

The two of them hurried breathlessly back to the coach-house to dial 999. As they did so, a figure stepped out of the mist.

Sharon let out a shriek. It was the figure of a man — tall and dark, in a long leather coat that hung elegantly from his slim body. Even in their shaking panic, the couple could see that this was no ordinary intruder. There was something distinguished, somehow almost princely, in his bearing as he stepped towards them. The leather coat was unbuttoned despite the cold, his white silk shirt casually open at the neck. ‘Good evening,’ he said with a smile.

‘Who are you?’ Geoffrey demanded.

The intruder just kept smiling. Out of the freezing fog behind him appeared two more figures. The woman had the wild black hair of a gypsy and was clad in tight, gleaming red leather. The other was the towering shape of the biggest, broadest man Lonsdale’s caretakers had ever seen. The three figures advanced, all smiling and exchanging knowing glances.

‘Don’t come another step,’ Geoffrey quavered, brandishing the shotgun. ‘Stay back, I tell you. This gun is loaded. I’ll shoot. Sharon, run inside and call the police, quick.’

‘There’s really no need for violence,’ said the elegant man in the long coat.

‘I mean it,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Not another step. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I will, if you make me.’

‘I doubt that very much.’ The man came on another step, still smiling.

Geoffrey Hopley made a terrorised gurgling sound from his throat, gripped the twelve-bore tightly and closed his eyes and jerked the trigger. The crash of the gunshot shattered the night and the darkness was lit up by its white muzzle flash as he discharged one barrel straight into the man’s chest at close range.

Then he opened his eyes, ears ringing from the shot, and his knees almost buckled under him as he saw the man still standing there.

The man tutted, fingered the tattered, bloodied hole in his silk shirt, and shook his head disapprovingly at Geoffrey. ‘I had always found the English to be such a hospitable and welcoming people,’ he said sadly. ‘How things change.’

Geoffrey was about to fire off the second cartridge when the enormous black man stepped forward, snatched the gun from his hands and bent its barrels into a U-shape as easily as if it had been a stick of liquorice.

Sharon had begun to gibber.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ said the wearer of the ruined silk shirt. ‘My name is Stone. Gabriel Stone.’