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Sir Toby waved me towards a desk next to a big bay window. Beyond it was a lawn and then trees. In the shadows of the wood I could just make out a thin man with Wellingtons, a black labrador and a rifle.

'Didn't even know I had a relative in Jamaica,' Sir Toby complained.

He paused, as if waiting for some comment; I gave him a nod. He sniffed and continued, 'A man called Winston Sinclair. I'm his next of kin apparently. The man died without property.' Spoken in a slightly ashamed tone. 'You want me to take a look at the material?'

 'You do deal, in antique documents, do you not?' Under the bay window was a wooden box about the size of a biscuit tin. Sir Toby heaved it on to the desk. Stencilled lettering on its side spelled out
Silver Hills Coffee. 20 kg.
He rummaged through wrapping and handed me a wodge of quarto-sized papers about three inches thick. 'Can't make sense of it. What about you? It is a manuscript of some sort, is it not?'

The condition of the pages was good, although the ink was browned with age and the page corners were lightly foxed, as we say in the antiquarian book trade. The first page was taken up with a title written in a sprawling, slightly immature hand:
MY TRAVELS TO AMERICA AND THE ARCHIPELAGO OF MEXICO, WHERE THE ISLANDS OF CUBA AND JAMAICA ARE TO BE FOUND.
Below the title was the author's name:
JAMES OGILVIE.
I'd never heard of him. A faded watermark ran through all the pages. I held the top page up to the window. I could just make out a crown surrounded by concentric ovals. Between the ovals were the words: HER MAJESTY'S STATE PAPER OFFICE. At a guess I put the manuscript at four hundred years old. But the words were incomprehensible; they seemed to be written in a sort of shorthand.

'More like a journal,' I said. 'It could take some time to transcribe it.'

'How long?'

'Days, probably.'

'I'm driving down to London this evening and won't be back until Sunday.'

'No problem. We'll leave it until you return.'

Sir Toby hesitated. 'Actually I'm anxious to be shot of it. Why don't you take it away? Give me a valuation when I get back.'

'I'm not sure I want the responsibility. What if I had a fire or a burglary?'

Another hesitation while Sir Toby weighed the odds. Then he said, 'I'll run that risk. But there is one thing.' He lowered his voice in the empty study. 'Confidentiality. For reasons which need not concern you, I don't want to be connected with this journal.'

'I'll put it in my flat. I live alone. Nobody will know about it but myself.' I tried to take the baronet by surprise: 'Sir Toby, is there something about this document you're not telling me?'

'Of course not, what an absurd idea.' He managed a sardonic laugh.

'Who was the Jamaican lawyer?' I asked.

The lips pursed disapprovingly. 'What on earth does that have to do with you?'

'If there's something of historical interest in here, I might want to chase up the source.'

Sir Toby froze. 'You will do no such thing. Confine yourself to transcribing the document. Just give me your translation, your valuation and your invoice.'

I lifted the parcel. 'I'll get back to you after the weekend.' Sir Toby nodded curtly. He turned to the bookcase; as I left the study he was pretending to read a book.

Outside, Debbie was being a femme fatale, lounging on the bonnet of the car like a model in a car show. 'People find Daddy a bit abrupt sometimes,' she said.

'Not me,' I lied. 'I'll probably be back next week.'

She rolled off the bonnet and leaned into the car window. 'Do you ride?' she asked, her eyes wide with enquiry. I gave her a sideways look and roared off. There was a spattering of gunfire in the woods to my left.

CHAPTER 3

The shop was quiet and I gave Janice the afternoon off and closed early.

In my flat, I took the manuscript from its box and put it in the safe in my bedroom. The safe was an elderly Guardsman with twelve-digit combination, a separate key and fire-resistant lining, and it had a wooden surround which made it look like a bedside cabinet. Normally it held nothing more valuable than my passport, a few near-the-limit credit cards and a thin pile of banknotes.

The Crown and Martyr was crowded, as usual on a Wednesday night, but I found myself a corner. Barney and I went through our ritual: he asked me what I wanted, I said the chicken curry and a pint of bitter, and he went off to collect it. The pub was ablaze with light and chatter, good after the grey silence of the Tebbit mausoleum. There was a birthday party at the next table and half a dozen office girls were letting their hair down. Somebody was leaning forward and speaking
sotto voce.
I caught snatches: '... honeymoon . . . rubber gloves .. . I'm told you have to
touch
the beastly thing . ..', followed by shrieks of female laughter. I settled down to my pint, vaguely disturbed by the events of the day and unable to make sense of them.

I'd finished my meal and my second pint when I spotted Barney waving a telephone receiver at me from the far end of the bar. I pushed my way towards it, surprised that anyone would know to contact me here.

'Mr Blake?' Her English was good, although the consonants were a bit harsh. The accent was Mediterranean or Turkish, and I put her age as about my own, thirtyish.

'You have something in your possession, given to you by Toby Tebbit?'

How the hell did she know that?
Cautiously: 'Perhaps.'

'And Tebbit has told you nothing about the contents?'

'Who am I speaking to, please?' I asked.

'You may call me Cassandra. I have information about the item which I'd like to share with you.'

There was another outburst of female laughter in the pub. I put my hand over an ear. 'I'm listening.'

'We should meet, but we can't be seen speaking together, Mr Blake. Do you know the prayer room in the cathedral?'

'You mean the Langland Chantry?'

The line went dead.

The night air was cold after the warmth of the pub. I trudged up Steep Hill, my mind buzzing with possibilities, none of them sensible. The cathedral was still open. I nodded to the lady at the collection box. There were a few late evening tourists, sparsely scattered around the huge, mind-emptying interior. I made my way towards the far end, past the big transept, before turning right into a small stone room with a heavy door and bars on its window. A notice said: HERE IS A PLACE TO BE QUIET WITH GOD. Another said: SILENCE PLEASE.

The centre of the room was taken up with a small table on which candles were burning. A wall was taken up with a plain wooden cross, another with tall, narrow stained-glass windows. There were hard wooden chairs against the walls, and there was a gargoyle, mother with child, with squat faces like Easter Island statues. The room was empty.

I waited. After about ten minutes the room began to feel vaguely oppressive; maybe it was the silence, maybe it was the overbearing presence of the iconry. I turned to leave and was startled to see a woman standing silently at the door, watching me.

She had short black hair and a hooked nose and dark eyes, and she may have been Greek, Italian, or even Turkish. She was dressed in a business suit, and she wasn't a local. Her dark eyes looked directly into mine. 'Mr Blake?'

'Yes. And you are?'

'I'll come to the point, Mr Blake. I'd like to buy it.'

I shook my head, mystified and uneasy. 'You'll have to discuss that with Sir Toby. By the way,' - I lowered my voice in the empty cathedral - 'how do you know he had the journal? That information is confidential.'

She waved a hand dismissively. 'Unfortunately Tebbit is in London and I need to acquire the document quickly.'

I asked her, 'It's cold here. Can we talk about this someplace warm? Over a glass of wine, maybe?'

She shook her head impatiently.

I shrugged. 'I'm sorry, I can't help you.'

'I'm authorised to offer you twenty thousand pounds for it.'

In Sir Toby's study I'd mentally bracketed the journal somewhere between one and three thousand dollars. For a moment I wondered if the woman was some sort of lunatic. There was something not right about her; whether it was her body language, or the direct way she had approached me, or the slight air of fanaticism which she seemed to exude, I couldn't say. 'I'd like to help, but it's not mine to sell.'

Again that impatient shake of the head. 'I have no time for horse-trading. We need the journal immediately. Let me go to my limit, which is fifty thousand pounds. You can have that by tomorrow morning, in cash if you like.'

Fifty thousand!
I began to feel a sense of unreality, as if I was watching a scene in a movie. The woman was peering at me, trying to read my mind. 'I'm sorry, but if it's not mine to sell, how can I sell it?'

'That is a conundrum.' She nodded thoughtfully, running a finger absentmindedly up and down her neck. Then, 'Is a hundred thousand pounds the answer?'

I think I must have gone pale. Certainly I felt my mouth going dry. The woman was deadly serious; I could see it in the tense downturn of her wide mouth and her steady, disconcerting stare. If twenty thousand was silly money, a hundred thousand was scary. It would also clear my overdraft, car loan and credit cards, and make a big dent in the mortgage on the flat. I actually hesitated for a moment. But then I was saying, 'I'm sorry, but there's no further point in this conversation. Why don't you just find out where Tebbit is and ask him to phone through his authorisation to sell?'

'The fact is, the journal is not Tebbit's to sell. It belongs to the people I represent.' She paused. 'And you have no right to be holding it.'

The tone of menace came with a touch so light that I wondered if I had imagined it. I asked, 'The people you represent?'

Curtly: 'Don't concern yourself with that.'

'I don't understand. If the journal is yours, why are you trying to buy it? Why not just prove ownership? Go through the courts if you have to.'

She shook her head. 'It would create . ..' - she struggled for the right word - 'complications.'

'As would my selling it to you without Sir Toby's permission. Look, he'll be back on Sunday. Why don't you speak to him then?'

'You must not return this article to Tebbit. But I see we will have to find other ways to persuade you.' She gave me a smile of undiluted malice, and said, 'We'll meet again, Mr Blake.'

'I look forward to it.'

The smile intensified, and then her high heels were clattering along the stone slabs of the nave.

I gave myself five minutes, feeling a bit shaky. There was a light drizzle outside, and a little cluster of merry revellers around a hot dog stall: I recognised the office party from the Crown and Martyr. I took the road round the side of the cathedral and turned off towards my flat, at the end of a cul-de-sac shared by half a dozen upmarket houses. The lane was deserted.

Feeling exposed in the street lights, I turned into the gravelled courtyard, fumbling for my keys and expecting heavies to jump out of the bushes. Cursing my overactive imagination, I inserted the Chubb key and turned it. Then the Yale, the wrong one, of course. Trying again, with an unsteady hand; finally I got it right and the door opened. I groped in the dark for the light switch. The hallway was empty; through to the living room: empty. Of course. I padded through to the bedroom, resisting the ridiculous temptation to look under my bed. Then I went round the flat checking doors and windows. Back in the hallway I hung up my jacket and kicked off my shoes, grinning and sighing with relief and mentally calling myself an idiot.

I was in the kitchen, rustling up a tomato sandwich and still grinning at my own silliness, when I spotted the rainwater on the windowsill. Just a few drops.

This time, when I went through the flat again, breadknife in hand, I opened wardrobes and looked under the bed. Finally I opened the safe, a feeling of dread washing over me. But the Model G400 Guardsman with key, keypad and fire-resistant lining was undisturbed, and I went weak with relief.

I threw my clothes off and ate the sandwich in bed, flicking through the journal pages but unable to make any sense of it. Finally I put it back in the safe and switched the light off. Things were swirling round in my head but I could make no sense of them either. I listened for sounds, but heard only the steady patter of rain on the roofs of cars and an occasional shudder from the refrigerator. From time to time I peered into dark corners of my room.

As I dozed off I thought that, if it hadn't been for the rainwater on the kitchen windowsill, I'd never have known someone had been through the flat.

In the event I didn't sleep much. Partly it was the foetal comfort of lying in bed and listening to rain battering off the window pane. Partly it was the mystery of the journal; a journal which Sir Toby had known nothing about from a relative he didn't know he had, but which was sending him into a state of mild paranoia. Mainly, though, it was the dark shadows in my room, and a vague foreboding of trouble to come.

CHAPTER 4

Round about eight in the morning I rustled up scrambled eggs, and while I watched low, black clouds sweeping in over the fields behind the flat, I made a telephone call.

'Sir Toby?'

'Yes?'

'Harry Blake here.'

A hesitation, then, 'Blake. How the hell did you find me?'

'Your daughter tells me you usually stay at the Cavendish. There's a problem. Someone's trying to get hold of the manuscript.'

'What?' Surprise and consternation came down the line.

'I was offered a lot of money for it, in fact a ridiculous sum. I referred them to you but they thought you wouldn't be interested. The woman concerned also claimed rightful ownership.'

A slight hesitation. Then, 'That's nonsense.'

'And something else. My flat was broken into. That can't be a coincidence.'

'You mean you were burgled? What about the manuscript?' There was alarm in his voice.