Kisses for Lula (31 page)

Mr Kadinski came over to the base of the ladder. ‘Maybe he moved it to a place where it would be more accessible. With another person in the room, he may have thought he’d be vulnerable climbing all the way up there.’

‘What does the file look like?’ asked Mona, joining Mr Kadinski. ‘We can help you find it while Jack sets up the cameras.’

‘Er,’ said Arns, looking around him at row upon row, stack upon stack, of identical brown document boxes with neatly typed labels at the base of their spines.

‘Frik,’ I said.

Mum was looking anxiously across at other boxes. ‘It’s definitely not anywhere near here,’ she concluded eventually.

‘I’m sure I’m right,’ said Mr Kadinski. ‘He’d want the file somewhere accessible. What does the label say?’

Mum gave us the details and suggested shelves to search first. We’d start at eye-level, first stack, and work our way
down, me and Mum on the right-hand side and Arns and Mona on the left.

We got going straight away and didn’t stop, our eyes and fingers moving anxiously from box to box. I was on the very bottom row, Arns and Mona still had more to go, when Jack called me over to him. I pulled a file out slightly to mark the spot where I’d need to start my checking from again, and ran over to him.

‘This is where we’re going to sit,’ he explained.

‘We?’

His eyes flipped dismissively to me and I saw his jaw clench. ‘I need someone to hold this sound boom,’ he said tightly. ‘That okay?’

‘Sure,’ I said hastily.

‘Arnold and Mona will be on the opposite side. Mona with the camera, Arnold with the sound. Mr K said better to have girl-boy combinations in case things go wrong. We don’t know how many Harrow will bring to the meeting.’ My heart started to patter. ‘Mr K and your mum down the far end, and Sergeant Trenchard near the door. Here’s how you need to position the boom.’

I listened carefully, then got back to my checking while Jack ran through things with his sister and Arnold. Mum and I met halfway down the bottom row. We looked at each other in despair. ‘It’s not on this side,’ called Mum to the others.

Feeling hot and panicky, I pulled off my fleece, leaving a stretchy black camisole top on underneath, and checked my watch. 8.44. ‘Omigod,’ I whispered to Mum.

‘Not here either,’ said Arns, coming over.

‘We’re just going to have to take our chances,’ said Sergeant Trenchard. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll call for back-up at nine ten when the men are safely in the building for their meeting. Everyone in their positions, please.’

My hands shook as I held the boom beside Jack. The space between us was charged and I just couldn’t look at him. He was in an awkward position, his body bent a little to shoot the camera at shoulder height. That way he could focus on faces and then angle down to the top of the desk around which we hoped the men would sit. I peered through the gap between the top of the boxes and the next shelf to see from roughly Jack’s viewpoint, and that’s when I noticed that I hadn’t pushed the file I’d pulled out as a marker back in. It stood proud from the others by five centimetres at least, a clear indicator that someone had been fossicking about in the room Mike had been the last to vacate.

Frikly frik frik!

Chapter Twenty-six

Jack followed my frozen stare. He shifted closer to see what I was looking at, and leaned into my exact line of vision. I could feel his breath on my cheek, ever so slightly, and a small movement sent the hairs of his forearms whispering across my skin.

I swallowed.

I felt hotter than ever.

Focus, Tallulah!
I scolded.

‘Was that file like that before?’ whispered Jack.

I shook my head.

‘Will he notice it?’

I nodded my head.

‘This could be bad.’

For once I agreed with him. Should I dash out and fix it? Would there be time? As if sensing my thoughts, Jack mouthed
no
at me. Not worth the risk.

I was about to argue when there was a sound from the door, then the hiss of it opening.

‘. . . cost millions to build. Regulated temperatures, the lot,’ Mike was saying to someone.

Jack swivelled his camera slowly and carefully and lowered his eye to the viewer. Lifting the boom, I leaned into the
stack to get the best possible view. Stinky Mike Burdon and Harry Harrow, big cahuna of Harrow Construction, were in the room. The door swung shut behind them.

‘I know all that,’ growled Harrow. ‘I built it ten years ago, remember?’

Even though Mike was the taller man, Harrow’s pit-bull stature, his thatch of sandy hair, those little
miss-nothing
eyes rendered him somehow more malevolently powerful.

Mike laughed nervously. ‘You’ve had some interesting projects, Mr Harrow.’ He walked over to the table in the central area, and I felt relief wash over me. It was all going to be fine. They were perfectly positioned for us to catch every word.

‘Nothing as interesting as Coven’s Quarter.’

Mike was walking over to the book stack opposite us, but he stopped and turned to face Harrow. ‘Coven’s Quarter is just going to be turned into townhouses, though.’

‘Luxury townhouses. And once Cluny’s Crematorium sells out to me, I’ll have the whole of that wasted forest space to build on. It’s gonna be the biggest development outside the university.’

‘Ah. Yes. Mabel mentioned that Cluny owned the northwest area.’

Harrow laughed. ‘She told me first. Did you think you’d use that info to squeeze even more out of me? That’s what got me into this tidy little project – her telling me that
historical documents show that Cluny owns the mountain from the crematorium all the way to the west side.’

Mike went red. ‘She should be reporting directly to me.’

Harrow laughed again, and pulled out a chair. ‘Handy, innit? Having a little historical mole like her around. Cluny doesn’t know what he’s got, obviously. There was once a deed for the Coven’s patch too, but that’s been missing for so many centuries it’s presumed common land now.’

Clearing his throat, Mike said, ‘You won’t get planning for a development that size. It would change all of Hambledon.’

‘Hambledon
needs
to change. Once the new rail line is in, thirty minutes to the city, this will be just another happening place on the commuter belt.’

‘New rail line?’

‘Yes, Mr Burdon. I have a reliable source – the mayor got a tidy payment from me for that titbit. Not even the councillors know about the new rail line yet.’

‘I –’ Mike took a step towards the developer, but Harrow wagged his forefinger and leaned back in his chair.

‘Nuh-uh uh-uh, Mr Burdon. You’ve done well here too. Ten grand is a handsome price for the Coven’s Quarter documents.’

‘Not in the light of all you’re talking about.’

‘Now don’t get greedy. Remember that even if the documents were presented on Monday, my
friends
in the
council would refute their significance. But I don’t like to rely on others too much. I’d rather they just weren’t an issue to begin with. Now, hand them over, please.’

My eyes slid to Jack’s, widening in panic. No! That couldn’t be true! I thought about Mr Kadinski’s video evidence. The attack on him. They wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to shut him up if that were true, surely.

‘Why do you want the documents if you have contacts in the council you can trust?’ Mike’s voice was whiny now. ‘Why didn’t you just have me shred them?’

‘Well now. I like to control such, uh,
vital
information myself. I wouldn’t want certain destroyed documents suddenly turning up on Monday. It could cause delays when my bulldozers are ready to move in. Expensive delays.’

‘But –’

‘Besides, I think I’m going to hang on to these papers. A miraculous reappearance of them once the complex is built will add something priceless to the townhouses. I can see the fancy brochures now: a truly magical home, sited on Britain’s earliest . . . I can’t remember it all exactly; it’s in those documents
you’re just not handing over
.’ Harrow suddenly stood and Mike took a step back, turning abruptly to the stack he’d been moving towards earlier.

‘They’re right he– Oh! Tha–’

‘What is it?’ Harrow’s fists bunched.

‘It looks like one of the files has been moved.’ Mike rubbed at his forehead, perplexed.

‘What does that mean? Is there a problem?’ Harrow began walking over to Mike. ‘
I want that paperwork!
’ he hissed.

I felt myself stop breathing.

‘It certainly is a problem.’ Mike put his hands on his hips and looked around as if expecting to see a hoard of file-tamperers with his x-ray eyes.

My heart stopped and I took a tiny step towards Jack, though every cell in my brain was screaming at me to stay very, very still. The silence was so absolute that for a moment I felt claustrophobic, felt how far under the ground we were, how windowless the space was. Everything seemed to be rushing in towards me. All the walls and shelves and even the great height of the ceiling seemed to close in. I thought my legs were about to give way when Jack, eyes still forward behind the camera, reached out and held on to my wrist for a second. It brought me back to earth, but my limbs were still a pile of scaredy-ass jelly.

Mike stooped and ran his finger along the files.

‘Oh, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘Must’ve been me. This is the box the documents are in.’

What?

How typical! I was a total cretin. I’d pulled the file to mark the spot to start checking from again, and had gone
on to the next without checking it and pushing it back – it
had
to be that one, didn’t it?

Mike opened the box file and removed a very old leather folder, which he placed carefully on the table. He opened it reverently and pointed out the text on the first page. ‘It’s quite hard to read. Written with a quill around
AD
800, and roughly translated from Old English it means:
Keep this place, for it is sacred. Have respect for all its energy
.’ He turned another page. ‘There’s weight to the argument for “energy” meaning “magic”, but that’s the fanciful interpretation.’

Harrow stepped towards Mike, and though Mike was one of my least-liked people in the world I winced at the twinge of menace I felt in the air.

‘
Just give me the damn folder
,’ Harrow hissed, all the conviviality of his previous patter gone. ‘I should have had this a week ago!’ He reached over and snatched it up, pressing it close to his chest.

Stinky Mike frowned. ‘I’ve not caused the delay,’ he said, sounding put out. ‘There was the problem with payment . . . and I told the mayor to explain to you that there was a history tour last week. Campus Security was here. I couldn’t just walk out with some of the most valuable documents this institution holds. And everything’s been on high alert since then. The best I could do was hide them here till it was safe to get them out.’

Harrow shifted uneasily. ‘And you’re sure there’s no security today?’

‘Very,’ replied Mike. ‘Everyone has assumed the documents are elsewhere now, and the library is closed for the weekend. Anne trusts me in here on my own.’

My arms, holding the boom at shoulder height, were starting to hurt. I rested my clenched hands ever so carefully on the files in front of me, making sure the boom still stood proud, picking up all the incriminating conversation.

As I took the weight off, a loud
crrrcrrcccrr
noise crackled into the air. Aghast, I lifted my hands back up. The sound came again. It hadn’t been my clumsiness, but Sergeant Trenchard’s radio, I realised, as yet another burst of transmission echoed across the room.

Mike and Harrow froze to the spot, staring in panic at each other, and then Harrow pulled out a gun and backed into the stack Jack and I were hiding behind. Suddenly we were faced with the rear of his head, thirty centimetres from our noses on the other side of the box files, as he scanned the room in front of him. I could see every shiny black detail of that gun and my skin prickled with a fear so cold I couldn’t move. Then adrenalin flooded into every vein and suddenly I saw that it wasn’t me that was shaking.

It was Harry Harrow.

With that gleaming barrel pointing this way and that, at
last he cried, ‘I can see you, whoever you are, behind those shelves! Come out or I’ll shoot!’

As Sergeant Hilda Trenchard came into view slowly, her hands up in the air, I held my breath. ‘A police team outside are coming down, Harrow,’ she said, still walking towards him. ‘And you’d do well to turn yourself in with dignity. You’re not going to gain anything by doing something stupid to me.’

‘We’ll see about that!’ hissed Harrow, and he cocked his gun.

Mum says only someone with scant regard for the value of historical documents could do what I did then, but I disagree. I go with Mr Kadinski’s verdict that I am a brave and wonderful human being. Though privately I know it was the look in Sergeant T’s eyes, changing from confidence to sudden uncertainty, that triggered the tae kwon do kick Carrie taught me last year – lightning fast at knee level – perfect for the job. I smashed the document boxes from my side right through to the next stack and caught Harrow just behind both knees, sending him thudding to the ground.