Newton’s Fire (22 page)

‘How so?’

‘You’ve heard of the Jesus myth, right? The idea that Jesus never even existed.’

‘What about it?’

‘A lot of that stems from St Paul, because he famously didn’t write much about Jesus the man, only about Christ the spiritual force. And he wrote something very peculiar in a letter to the Corinthians, about the followers of Moses drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ. Some alchemists interpreted that to mean that Jesus somehow
was
the philosopher’s stone. Some even believed that if they found the philosopher’s stone they could precipitate the Second Coming.’

Rachel looked around at the faces on the walls. ‘What the hell were these guys trying to do?’

A dull buzzing noise sounded before Luke could answer. Dust motes shaken from the walls and ceiling began swirling in the lamplight. He looked bleakly upwards. ‘They’re drilling,’ he said. ‘They’re coming down through the floor.’

The drilling stopped for a minute or so, giving Luke and Rachel hope that they might have given it up. But then it returned even louder. The air grew thicker with dust, making them blink and cough. ‘We have to get away,’ said Luke.

‘What if they hear us?’

‘We can’t stay here.’

They headed back along the passage to the well, dismantled the wall. They couldn’t risk the bucket banging on the sides of the shaft, so Luke untied it from the rope, set it down behind him. It was dark above, the basement lights off. That was something. He climbed as quietly as he could, though the rope still creaked as it twisted. The drilling grew louder as he neared the top, giving him cover. He peered over the rim. No sign of anyone. He hauled himself out and beckoned to Rachel. She began to climb, slowly and steadily, swinging from wall to wall as—

A door opened abruptly. Luke barely had to time to warn Rachel and duck down behind the well. Footsteps hurried to and up the main staircase. Silence for a minute or so, then a toilet flushed and plumbing groaned. More footsteps on the stairs, then the gallery door opened and closed once more. All clear. He beckoned to Rachel, dangling patiently. She looked weary by the time she made it to the top. He helped her out, gave her a few moments rest. They took off their shoes and carried them to the stairs. The drilling paused for a few moments and they could hear talking. Then it started up again. They climbed the stairs. The whole museum was in darkness except for a few emergency lights. A man was looking out one of the ground-floor windows, his back to them. They continued up to the first floor. The fire escape door had a locking bar so that it could only be opened from inside. Luke pressed down on it, his heart in his mouth lest it trigger the alarm. It didn’t. A car passed by. Broad Street looked empty in its headlights. Luke slipped out onto the fire escape, held the door for Rachel. The locking bar clicked behind them. No going back now.

The wrought-iron steps were as cold as fear on Luke’s soles. They crept down to the bottom, pulled their shoes back on and walked briskly but openly, as though with nothing to hide. A left turn took them into relative darkness, then out onto a square. A police car ahead forced them to loop around so that it took them twenty-five minutes to reach Pelham’s BMW. They watched it for a while, saw no sign of ambush. Yet Luke felt anxious all the same. ‘Stay here,’ he whispered to Rachel.

Using parked cars for cover, he made his way along the pavement. Still no sign of danger. Footsteps approached, grew close. A young man lost his footing on the kerb and stuttered into an impromptu dance, laughing drunkenly at himself. Luke waited until he was almost level with the BMW then pressed the remote lock on Pelham’s key-fob. It beeped loudly and its corner lights flashed orange. Almost instantly, the doors of a dark SUV down the street flew open. Three men jumped out and ran towards the hapless drunk. Luke turned and crouched his way back to Rachel, but a cry went up before he reached her. They’d been spotted.

Rachel had a few yards’ head start. She turned left into darkness and he caught up with her. They reached a cul-de-sac. Automated intruder lights switched on as they passed, giving them away. Now the men were maybe fifty yards behind and closing fast. Two houses in relative darkness were separated by a narrow passage. Luke grabbed Rachel’s hand and pulled her down it. The alley was overgrown with nettles, creepers and ivy. Luke put an arm up to cover his face as he bulled his way along, then his foot went straight through the rusted iron of an old dustbin lid, making a noise like a firecracker. They emerged into a small back garden, climbed a fence into a neighbouring property, then another. It was dark as sin back here, but they could hear the chase getting closer and closer. Luke pulled Rachel to the ground beside him just as two grunting shadows vaulted over the fence behind, crossed the lawn and then vanished. They gave it a few more moments then went to the rear of the garden. A wooden gate opened out onto a dark footpath that led to a lamplit street. They ducked their heads as they hurried away, ears pricked, pulses pumping hard. But they reached the end of the street without alarm.

A signpost pointed towards the train station. Luke looked at Rachel; she nodded. But there seemed to be police cars everywhere, driving at a dawdle to scan for couples to stop and question. They kept to back streets and finally made it. The station was closed for the night, its main entrance shuttered.

‘I’ll check for the first train,’ Luke whispered. He was almost across the road when a side door opened and a policeman came out, carrying two mugs, concentrating hard on not spilling them. He walked over to a silver SUV, climbed inside. Luke swore softly, turned and retreated. ‘Let’s try the coach station.’

Rachel shook her head. ‘They’ll be there too.’

‘A minicab?’

‘They’ll have thought of that.’ A touch of desperation in her voice.

‘Then
what
?’

‘Let’s call Pelham’s sister. At least that way we know we’ll have someone fighting for us.’

Luke nodded. They couldn’t risk the bank of phones by the station, but they found another one nearby. Luke still had some credit on his phonecard. He rang the number Pelham had given him. A woman answered, groggy with sleep. ‘Who the hell is this?’ she groaned. ‘Don’t you know what damned time it is? If you’ve woken the kids—’

‘I’m really sorry. My name’s Luke Hayward. I’m a friend of Pelham’s.’

‘He’s not here,’ she said, as though struggling to believe she’d been woken up for this. ‘He doesn’t even live here.’

‘I’m not trying to find him,’ Luke told her. ‘I’m calling on his behalf. He’s been arrested.’

‘He’s been
what
?’ Suddenly sharpness in her voice. Alertness. As if she’d sat up in bed. ‘Who are you?
Where
are you?’

‘In Oxford,’ said Luke. He began explaining what had happened but hadn’t got very far when Rachel grabbed his arm, pointed to a police car had just turned into their street and was now accelerating towards them. He dropped the phone and ran. They fled down a footpath and sprinted through a park until they couldn’t run any more, just stood there in the shadows of a copse, heaving for breath.

‘They’re monitoring the payphones,’ wailed Rachel. ‘They’re monitoring the fucking payphones. Who
are
these people?’

She sounded close to the edge. He put his arms around her, gave her a hug. ‘We don’t know that they’re monitoring the phones,’ he told her. ‘It might have been a coincidence. And, anyway, we’re still free, and now we’ve got Pelham’s sister on our side. And he wasn’t kidding: she sounded fierce.’

Rachel nodded. ‘What do we do? They’re everywhere.’

‘I took the coach from here once,’ said Luke. ‘We stopped at least three times on our way out of town to pick up more passengers. They can’t watch everything, so maybe they won’t be watching those other stops. Let’s find one and check it out.’

‘You remember where they were?’ asked Rachel.

‘Pretty much. And they have to be on the way to the motorway, right?’

‘Okay,’ said Rachel. ‘Let’s try it.’

Walters briefly joined the chase of Luke and the girl, but Kieran and Pete were quicker and fitter than he was, and someone needed to stay behind in case they looped around and came back for the BMW. He went over to it. Luke had unlocked it to lure them from their hiding places, but had he locked it again? He tried the driver door. It was open. He knelt on the driver’s seat and had a rummage front and back, but found nothing of interest except for some chocolate bars in the glove compartment. He ate one while he popped the bonnet and disabled the starter motor. They wouldn’t be going anywhere in it now.

He checked his mobile for a signal as he returned to the SUV. Maybe Kieran and Pete would bring Luke and the girl back here themselves. More likely they’d pin them down somewhere and call in, so that he could go and collect them without their being seen. The last thing they needed right now, was the police putting them together with Luke and Rachel, for that would make disappearing them far harder. And Walters needed them to disappear. He
liked
his life. He had money, women and respect. No way was he going to let those two screw it up for him.

He’d been waiting the best part of half an hour when Kieran and Pete finally appeared out of the darkness. They were alone. ‘What the hell?’ he said, getting out. ‘Where are they?’

‘They got away.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’

‘They’re better at this than they’ve any right to be,’ said Kieran ruefully. ‘That trick with unlocking the car …’

‘And I’m supposed to tell Croke that, am I? That they’re better at this than we are? Screw that.’

‘Then what do we do?’

Walters climbed back inside the SUV. ‘We keep this fiasco to ourselves,’ he said. ‘Then we find the bastards and finish this.’

Making their way across Oxford frayed the nerves of both Luke and Rachel. There were police cars everywhere, and even unmarked cars held menace, particularly the SUVs. The back streets were no soft option, either, because taking them made it so hard to keep their bearings. But finally they made it to a coach stop. They watched for a few minutes but could see no sign of it being monitored, so they went to check the timetable. The first coach of the day was leaving for London in half an hour. At last something seemed to be going their way.

The coach stop itself was too exposed for comfort, so they waited in an alley across the road. Rachel shivered. The night had grown cool, but Luke sensed there was more to it than that. He wanted to comfort her, but feared that a hug would be taken amiss, so he touched her arm instead. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him. ‘It’s just that I realized something. The police have been looking for couples, right?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘So what if they’ve asked the coach drivers to report any couples they pick up?’

‘We have to get out of here before it gets light,’ said Luke. ‘It’s worth the risk.’

‘I know. I’m just saying that maybe we should get on the coach separately, pretend we don’t know each other.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Luke admiringly. ‘In fact …’ He took out Pelham’s wallet and gave her half the cash inside. ‘The coach stops several times on its way out of town. If I get on at the next stop, they’ll never put us together.’

Rachel’s face became anguished. ‘What if you don’t make it in time?’

‘Then I’ll catch the next one. It’s only another hour.’ He handed her Olivia’s laptop, as carrying it himself would only slow him down. ‘You’ll wait for me at Victoria, right?’

‘Of course,’ she said. Their eyes met for the longest moment and she gave his hand a squeeze. ‘But please don’t miss it.’

‘I won’t,’ he promised. He nodded and headed off, jogging eastwards along the road, glancing back for police cars, making sure the coach wasn’t early. With all the evasive manoeuvres he had to make, the coach just about beat him to the next stop, but he waved frantically and the driver took pity. He was panting hard as he climbed aboard and paid. He pocketed his ticket and his change, walked down the aisle. Rachel was sitting across from the emergency doors, staring out of the window, pretending not to know him, yet not quite able to hide her smile. He slipped into the seat behind her as the coach pulled away.

He looked around. The coach was less than a quarter full. An unshaven man was stretched out along the rear seat, snoring lightly. A harried-looking executive in a rumpled dark suit was tapping away at his laptop, perhaps preparing the report he should have written over the weekend. A pair of prim elderly women clutched handbags in their laps. Four teenagers in shiny leather jackets took turns at a bottle of red wine.

They left Oxford without alarm, reached the motorway. The interior lights dimmed. Passengers rested their heads against companions or the windows, tried to sleep. Rachel turned on Olivia’s laptop and went through the photographs once more, twisting slightly in her seat so that Luke could see over her shoulder. No one was paying them any attention, so he went to sit beside her. She set the laptop between them. Their legs and arms weren’t quite touching, yet he could feel the radiated warmth of her all the same. He glanced sideways and felt a sharp stab of affection for her, an urge to take her hand, put an arm around her, hold her tight. Chance had thrust them together; yet it felt astonishingly like fate.

She became aware of his attention. ‘What?’ she asked, glancing up.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

She gave him a wry smile. ‘Nothing?’

He felt himself blushing like a teenager. He had to say something, if only as cover. The wall with the Newton sculpture was showing on the screen, and he remembered the slight anomaly he’d noticed earlier, so he touched the inscription with his fingertip. ‘These two lines,’ he said. ‘Don’t they look a bit wonky to you?’