Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us (16 page)

‘Probably the most valuable antique in the place.’ Jonah watched Patch reach into his shoulder bag and pull out an old-fashioned telephone receiver. ‘Unless
that
is. What’re you going to do, phone a friend?’

‘This is all you need to crack an old-time safe like this,’ Patch explained, unscrewing the mouthpiece. ‘The amplifier in here lets you hear the clicks of the
safe dial like someone’s snapping their fingers in your ear.’ He fished out a small metal disc attached by short, coloured wires. ‘You note down the numbers that set the tumblers clicking, then try out each combination of them till –’

‘Get on with it, Cyclops,’ said Motti, who was now keeping watch in the doorway.

Jonah felt a bit of a spare part. He crossed to the window, looked out into the grounds. Different darknesses of sky and shadow loured over the silent orchard. Nothing moved.

He started as the safe door opened with a noisy creak.

‘We’re in,’ Patch breathed, putting down his phone.

‘OK, geek, take over the watch.’ Motti crossed back to the safe and reached gingerly inside. ‘This has gotta be it. Could be rigged. Incendiary or …’

‘Could be cursed,’ said Patch.

Motti pulled a small cedar casket out of the safe, placed it on a writing desk and started muttering something quietly. His saturnine features looked almost demonic in the uplight from Patch’s torch as the strange, arcane syllables tripped darkly from his tongue. It sounded to Jonah like some ancient prayer, but to what god or spirit he couldn’t hazard a guess.

Slowly, Motti opened the cedar chest. ‘We got ’em,’ he muttered, carefully removing what looked like bits of old leaf that had somehow blown inside.

‘The fragments,’ breathed Patch, pulling a tiny camera from his shoulder bag. ‘Lay ’em down on the desk and I’ll get snapping.’

Jonah watched, fascinated by the speed and precision
with which they worked. But then Patch caught him looking and frowned over his camera. ‘The door, Jonah!’ he urged him.

Jonah nodded, turned and checked for signs of movement outside.

His heart almost stopped as he saw a small figure across the darkened hallway, hunched up and half-lost to the shadows at the back of the room.

He ducked out of sight, but knew he’d been much too slow.

Motti and Patch caught the sudden movement.

‘Trouble?’ Motti demanded, gathering up the scraps of parchment and replacing them in the cedar chest.

‘I saw someone!’ Jonah hissed. Terrified, he peeped back around the side of the door, but the figure had departed as silently as it arrived.

‘He saw me,’ he breathed. ‘Must have done.’

‘You useless dick! You had one job to do …’ Motti passed the little chest to Patch, who stuck it back in the safe. ‘Which way did they go?’

‘Back the way we came.’

Patch pocketed the camera and hastily hung the painting on the wall. He turned to Motti. ‘So we gotta find a new way out?’

‘It’s OK. We ain’t so far from the main entrance. If the alarms go off now, we got nothing to lose going out that way.’ He barged Jonah aside from the doorway. ‘Let’s move it.’

Jonah felt sick with fear as he stumbled after the others. Any second now, the alarms would sound, steel shutters would slam down all around them, cutting off any hope of escape …

Only they didn’t. The house stayed cloaked in a silence as thick as the shadows.

‘You sure you didn’t dream this figure you saw?’ Motti demanded, his fingers hovering over a thick, heavy bolt on the massive oak door.

‘I swear someone was there.’

‘Only I don’t hear no alarm bells …’ Patch looked apologetic. ‘And you’ve been pretty jumpy, Jonah.’

‘Maybe they thought we were the cleaners,’ said Motti sourly. ‘Aw, this is bullshit.’

‘I tell you I
saw
someone. Right when you were saying …’ he shrugged, ‘… whatever it was you were saying.’

‘Ancient Inuit prayer for protection ’gainst evil,’ whispered Motti. ‘Good all-purpose curse-buster, since Tye ain’t around to work her voodoo.’

‘Please say you’re joking,’ sighed Jonah.

‘
Something
scared off your little shadow, right?’ Motti started retracing his footsteps. ‘C’mon, we should get the hell out of here. We are seriously pushing our luck.’

Jonah felt a mixture of relief and humiliation as he once again tagged on after the others. They wound their furtive way through the splendid halls and corridors. Somehow, the atmosphere seemed more threatening than before. Dark, accusing eyes stared down from the portraits. Suits of armour stood poised, ready to strike out at them without warning.

All three of them slowed down as they neared the room where they’d heard the woman’s voice, but it was silent now, its door still firmly closed.

After what seemed like hours, they reached the
white, clinical tiles of the snake lab and the hothouse beyond. Jonah almost welcomed its stifling heat. It was a sign they were nearly out.

‘Patch, you go first,’ said Motti, ‘clear the way of critters, since you like ’em so much. Then I’ll go through with the bag. Jonah, wait till I’m well clear, then follow us through. We’ll both help you out through the crawl space, but take it nice and slow, ’K?’

Jonah didn’t argue. A little bruised pride was the least of his problems right now.

Patch shone his torch into the glass case through which they’d entered the house. There were no snakes there now – perhaps they had slithered outside? Jonah chewed his lip as Patch clambered into the case and twisted himself round ready to take on the crawl space. Once he’d vanished from sight, Jonah gave Motti a hand getting inside. Motti pushed his bag and torch through the hole first, then started to wriggle carefully after them.

For a moment Jonah stood alone, uneasy in the thick, hissing darkness, waiting for the all-clear.

‘Leaving so soon?’

There was someone else there with him. A woman’s voice, quiet and foreign. She sounded amused. Jonah swung round to see, but there was only blackness and shadow all around.

‘Perhaps you are lost? I do not think you are where you think you are …’

Jonah scrambled inside the case, ducked down and shoved himself into the crawl space. ‘Someone’s here,’ he shouted.

Motti shone the torch in his eyes, shushing him. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘It’s no good! We’ve got to run for it!’ He pushed forward, catching his arm on the glass as he tried to muscle through. A hard, sickening slide through his flesh, and the skin burnt hot. He gasped.

‘Take it slow, Jonah,’ hissed Patch. ‘God, Mott, he’s cut himself.’

‘Hold still, you’re gonna break the … Patch, help me with him!’

Jonah felt their arms gripping his, hauling him out. The glass scraped his shin through his jeans, caught on his shoe – but somehow it didn’t break, the alarm didn’t sound. The grass was sweet-smelling, cool against his hot face.

‘Get up,’ said Motti gruffly. ‘Now!’

‘Shit! He’s bleeding a lot.’ Patch sounded panicked. ‘Can we carry him?’

‘We gotta walk light to beat the sensors.’

‘There was someone in there, I’m telling you!’ Jonah whispered hoarsely. ‘She’ll hit the alarms! We have to run –’

‘Jonah, you gotta hold it together, OK?’ Motti’s glasses were sliding down his nose, but he held Jonah’s stare, as if willing him to calm. ‘It’s OK. Be cool. Breathe. It’s OK.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jonah croaked, getting a hold on himself. ‘But I swear she was in there, Motti, watching us.’

‘Like whoever that was watching us in the hall?’

Jonah squared up to him. ‘I didn’t imagine it!’

Patch laughed nervously. ‘Maybe it was a snake?’

‘It sounded like that woman in the room we heard talking to Samraj.’

‘The dark plays tricks on us,’ Motti said soothingly. ‘You got a little freaked out in there, buddy, but you’re OK … and now we gotta go.’

Jonah bit his tongue, nodded meekly. He supposed there would be time to argue the toss later – if they made it out in one piece. He stared down at his arm, which was starting to throb like hell, glad of the black clothes that hid the sticky wetness of the wound, the damage done.

Patch tore off some duct tape and wrapped it tight round his arm, a makeshift tourniquet. ‘That good?’

‘Hurts like hell.’

‘Hell is what happens if we get caught,’ said Motti quietly, cautiously leading them away from the house. ‘You remember that.’

Their luck lasted as far as the outer wall.

The rubber footholds Motti had applied so painstakingly should have made the climb easy, and Jonah did his best to scale the brickwork as lightly and carefully as Patch and Motti had before him. But the cut in his calf was stinging sharply: he could feel sticky blood soaking his trouser leg, dribbling into his sock and shoe. Just as he was nearing the top he scraped the wound against one of the footholds and gasped with pain, gripped the wall to stop himself from falling.

And the goddamn alarms finally went off. The din and blare was incredible, even all the way out here.

Motti swore. ‘Get the hell down from there, numbnuts!’
Jonah threw himself down from the top of the wall, landed awkwardly and rolled over. Motti grabbed him by his good arm and hauled him up. ‘What the hell did you do?’

‘I’m sorry. My leg, I cut it on the glass …’

Patch slipped an arm round Jonah’s back, tried to help Motti take his weight, though he was too small to be a lot of help. ‘You did your leg in and you never told us?’

‘I didn’t want to make a fuss –’

‘If we’d known, we coulda helped you,’ Motti grunted. ‘You don’t get extra points for trying to be a hero.’ He and Patch broke into a shambling run down the slope of the olive grove, half dragging, half carrying Jonah between them. ‘God knows who’s gonna come running at those alarm bells. But maybe if you’re real lucky, there’ll be a priest among ’em.’

‘A priest?’

‘Sure,’ said Motti darkly. ‘He can read you the last fricking rites once I’ve kicked your ass all over this goddamn olive grove.’

‘At least it proves one thing that was bugging me, Mot,’ Patch piped up. ‘I was starting to think the alarms had been done before we got there. You know, like in Cairo. That it was maybe a set-up.’

‘Well, hey, cool, guess the geek’s done us a good turn,’ muttered Motti. ‘He’s reminded us we’re just the best there is. When we don’t have a goddamn amateur screwing things up for us.’

Jonah listened to the deranged howl of the sirens. He didn’t say a word. What the hell
could
he say?

When Motti judged that they’d covered a safe distance,
they lay low in bushes for most of the night, awkward and uncomfortable. At one point a helicopter swooped in over the house like a UFO, blazing with light as it circled the area and then descended on the grounds.

‘Think it’s the cops?’ said Patch.

Motti shrugged. ‘Like I say. When someone like Samraj gets ripped off, it ain’t just the cops she calls.’

When the helicopter departed, the dark countryside fell quiet save for the drowsy thrum of the cicadas. Jonah’s arm throbbed in time with their song, and his leg was killing him. Sometimes he drifted into fevered catnaps, and each time he heard the woman’s voice again in his head and woke with a start. He pictured her as some hunched and hideous witch, holding vigil in the shadows with her snake familiars, watching him through unearthly eyes.

As the morning sun began to warm the cold grey soup of cloud and sky, Jonah watched the beautiful Tuscan countryside resolve itself around him. Right now, he wished he could trade the whole lot for the hard, safe slab of mattress in his old cell.

‘C’mon,’ said Motti suddenly. ‘I think maybe it’s safe to move now. The car’s another half-mile.’

‘Is that all?’ sighed Patch. ‘What if they’re still out searching for us?’

‘We should see ’em coming now it’s getting light.’ He glanced at Jonah. ‘You OK to walk?’

‘Walk …’ Jonah nodded to himself. ‘Yeah, maybe it’s time I did exactly that.’

‘I’m …’ Motti shrugged. ‘I’m sorry for losing it with you, OK, man? I know it’s early days for you. It
wasn’t your fault.’

‘Yes, it was,’ said Jonah. ‘And I could have got you both killed.’

‘Well, now you’ve learned for next time,’ said Patch. ‘Ain’tcha?’

‘C’mon. Time to move on.’ Motti struck out on to the path that led down into the sleepy hamlet. Patch followed him in silence, rubbing his fingers distractedly across the leather over his missing eye.

Jonah hung back a few seconds. Then he trailed along behind, like driftwood towed in their wake.

Jonah’s elation at making it back to the car and escaping Bellosguardo soon bled away at the prospect of having to explain his foul-ups to the chief. Next to the crushing sense of humiliation he felt, his injuries were little more than scratches.

‘Relax,’ Motti said, burning rubber as they tore back up the autostrade. ‘I’ll square things with Coldhardt.’

‘Yeah.’ Patch was back hunched over his Game Boy. ‘The important thing is, we got away with the stuff he wanted. The rest is just details.’

‘I’ll call ahead, make sure there’s a doctor waitin’ for you,’ Motti added.

‘Thanks,’ said Jonah. ‘I don’t – I mean …’ He sighed. ‘No one’s ever watched out for me like this before. You know?’

Patch actually looked up at him from his busy screen. ‘Told you. We watch each other’s backs.’

‘Even after I screwed up the whole thing?’

‘Will you quit beating yourself up?’ Motti threw a grin back over his shoulder. ‘That’s
my
job! Just promise me one thing, geek.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That you ain’t bleedin’ over my seats. ’Cause if you are, you’re gonna know what bleedin’ really is, right?’

Jonah smiled. ‘Right.’

He slipped in and out of sleep. The journey seemed to take hours, even at Motti’s breakneck speed, but finally the buzz of Coldhardt’s gates woke Jonah properly. They were back in the grounds, but he felt no better. His failure weighed heavy on his mind.

‘Tye and Con ain’t back till this afternoon,’ Motti reported, as he swung the car into a large, air-conditioned garage. ‘So, unlucky – you got no nubile nurses to fetch you drinks and stuff.’