Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) (14 page)

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              “Hello Ben.” William said. He had spent much of his walk into town reflecting on the best approach to use with Ben. He remembered the advice he had received from Monty Taylor when he first started his training. He wasn’t sure how to deal with what was, he later realised, a straightforward parish problem. Monty had said that some people liked their vicars to be knowledgeable and have all the answers. Those where the unreasonable, unrealistic minority. Most of a vicar’s parishioners wanted advice they could understand. Monty advised him to remember the acronym K.I.S.S.-Keep It Simple Stupid.

              This time his approach had to be flawless. It was important to him to gain his half brother’s trust. He wasn’t sure why, an obligation to his newly acquired father? It didn’t matter. What was important was that he struck the correct note and their fragile relationship was given the time it needed to flourish.

              Ben looked at him, remembering their first meeting the day before and felt uncomfortable. He spoke quickly, all of the words cascading into each other.

“Sorry about yesterday. Do I still have a job? I’ve not had a brother before. We need to get to know each other.” Pausing to catch his breath, Ben went across to the counter and made two cappuccinos for himself and William and a bowl of tea for Wooster. He also grabbed a teacake, which he offered to Wooster. Wooster swallowed it in two large bites and then licked his hand to say thank you.

“He likes you.” William said, “Most people wouldn’t have got the lick. Thanks for the coffee. Can we start again? I didn’t explain anything very well yesterday and, without meaning to, upset you. I’d like to get to know you too. Also, I’m going to need your help.” Ben flared up, interrupting William and snapped at him,

“Don’t patronise me. I’m not stupid. I have a crippled leg, that doesn’t mean I’ve had a frontal lobotomy and can’t see when people are trying to be sweet and nice to the poor cripple...” William interrupted, anxious to complete his sentence and clarify what he had meant for Ben.

“Ben I’m a vicar, I’ve never run anything. I might now own the shop but you’re still in charge. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of where to begin. I haven’t come to take this away from you. I’d like to work with you, to learn what to do, for you to teach me, that’s all.”

Ben sat for a moment staring at his coffee.

“I do that a lot. Mum and dad were always telling me to be a bit less defensive, not to assume everyone wanted to take the piss out of me or take advantage. I must try harder for them.” Smiling Ben said,

“Would you like to view your empire?”

They walked around the shop. The upper floor mirrored the main sales area downstairs but without the coffee counter. The store rooms, toilet and office where on the first floor behind what appeared to be a wall of bookshelves. However, slotted into the centre of this bank of shelving was a doorway, which was overlaid with false book spines to give the appearance of a continuous wall of books. The stores and office covered one-third of the upper floor, the majority assigned to the stock room. The office was small, very small, consisting of a tatty antique desk, leather captain’s chair, filing cabinet and three shelves covered in stacked box files. That was it. No safe.

William turned his bulk with care in the confined space and said to Ben,

“Is that everything?”

Looking puzzled, Ben replied,

“What else were you looking for; it’s a bookshop come coffee shop, not a department store.”

“In his letter to me Ernest said that he had left a package in a safe for me. I haven’t seen a safe.”

“We don’t have one. I cash up at the end of each day and put the takings into the night safe at the bank.” He indicated a building on the opposite corner.

“If we need change we just walk the ten yards across to the bank and collect it as we need it.”

A voice penetrated the office from the shop beyond the wall,

“Ben can you come down, delivery.”

“Ok, Debbie I’m on my way.” To William he said,

“It’s all yours, look around, whatever you want. If you have any questions come and find me. I’ll tell the staff what’s happening. Coffee later?”

              Once Ben had left to deal with the delivery, William surveyed the small stock room and office. Starting in the storeroom in wandered up and down the metal racking that held books on every subject imaginable. The popular titles side by side with esoteric fiction and obscure non-fiction volumes. Audio books on CD’s, nestled in the corner of the stock room alongside e-readers and next to them; stationery for the shop, brochures, till rolls and other miscellanies. Nothing else; no doors into cupboards or doors into hidden rooms.

              William sidled past boxes of books that had yet to make it onto the shelves and went into the office. He stood at the door and looked around the room. There was a desk and chair, shelving for files and catalogues and a digital radio set to Classic FM. He examined the desk, searching inside the drawers that formed two plinths for the top of the desk to sit on. No false fronts hiding miniature safes, just drawers.

              He leaned back in the captain’s chair stroking Wooster’s head and stared at the untidy shelving in the corner of the office. Something caught his eye, nothing he could put a finger on. Then he saw it. Who had drawn on the wall? Intrigued, he went across to have a closer look. The line extended from the floor to a height of about five feet. This was mirrored at the other end of the shelving. The shelving had been extended beyond the lines on either side in an effort to disguise them. William removed the files from the top shelf and was rewarded by another line connecting the two upright lines. A door? Moving the remainder of the files to one side, he saw that there was a recessed handle folded flat to the woodwork and a keyhole.

              He took the key that Ernest had left him and tried to fit it into the hole, but it was too big. Had he hidden the key or was he carrying it with him when he died? Fighting a sense of rising panic, he thought for a moment and then began to search the desk. The drawers were all empty apart from a wide, shallow one that ran along the middle of the desktop. This contained a few pens and a stapler and an out of date flyer advertising the Sherborne Literary Festival, two thousand and ten. He looked under the desk, around the back of the desk, on the sides of the desk. Nothing.

“If you tell someone to look in a safe Wooster, it would help if you told them how to find the safe and where they had hidden the key for the secret door.”

Handel’s Messiah came flooding into the room from William’s jacket pocket. He took his ancient mobile phone out and answered it.

“Hello, William Bacchus.”

“William, it’s Annabel. Just wanted to see how it was going with Ben, can you talk?”

“Fine thanks, we seem to have overcome our earlier difficulties.” William was about to continue the obligatory pleasantries when he remembered a conversation he had had with Annabel the previous evening. They had been discussing families and William’s newly acquired sibling. As an only child he was out of his depth on behaviour etiquette with a younger unpredictable brother. Annabel had told him about her own sister and the complicated relationship they had endured until puberty had been dealt with. They had evolved from two warring amalgamations of adolescent hormones to best friends in a matter of two months. 

“Annabel, let me ask you a question. If you wanted to hide a key on or in a desk, where would you put it?”

There was a slight pause, with only the regular sound of breathing coming from the telephone, while Annabel considered the question.

“When I wanted to hide my diary key from my sister, I taped it to the bottom of one of the drawers. Any good?”

“You might be a lifesaver; I’ll let you know later. Coffee, this afternoon, here?”

“It’ll have to be late; four thirtyish, see you then.”

             
Removing the drawers one by one from the desk, he found the key taped to the third drawer he tried. William put the office back the way he had found it, adjusting the box file positions on the shelf so that he could put the key into the keyhole and so he could reach the door handle. He slid the key into the lock it fitted. He turned it clockwise until he heard an opening click. Without the need for the recessed handle, the door swung open three or four inches; wide enough to slip his hand in and ease it open. Expecting to go into a room, William was surprised that the door led to a set of stairs up into the attic of the building.

             
William peered up the stairs into the gloom, seeing nothing other than a discoloured ceiling due to the acute angle of the stairs. He pulled the door closed behind him sliding a small bolt across to hold it in place and ascended the stairs to the room above. At the top of the stairs he flicked a light switch that bathed the room in a warm yellow glow. He entered a dusty replica of the office below, though a little larger. It contained the same style of desk, captain’s chair and filing cabinets and in the corner next to the desk was a large solid ornate safe. Opposite the top of the staircase was a small dormer window with a padded window seat that looked out along Long Street.

                            William looked at the safe, intrigued by what might be in there. Taking the key from his pocket, he slid it into the safe’s lock and turned it clockwise until he heard the tumblers releasing. Grasping the large brass handle, he twisted and the bolts slid back into the door and let him pull open the safe door
.
The safe contained a letter address to him and a computer memory stick, nothing else.

Sitting down at the desk, he opened the envelope. Inside was a banker’s draft payable to him for one hundred thousand pounds and a handwritten note. Setting the banker’s draft to one side, he spread the letter out on the desk and began reading.

‘Dear William,

Congratulations on finding the safe. Sorry for being so obtuse; but I couldn’t be sure that anything I left for you wouldn’t have been read before it was passed to you. All the information you need is on the memory stick. Guard it well as it contains the only copy of the files and papers that you will need to complete the tasks. As you can see it is attached to a gold chain, I suggest you wear the chain around your neck day and night. I know that this will seem melodramatic, humour me at least until you have had a chance to read the information on the flash drive. There are a number of paper files that corroborate this data. These are held in a safe deposit box at the bank opposite the shop. They use electronic access codes, your number is:

1123581321 (one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen and twenty one) if you have any mathematical knowledge you should recognise it!

The draft is the first annual payment. Use it to open an account at the bank. On each anniversary of the date of the account opening, a further one hundred thousand pounds will be deposited. You know all the details from your meeting with Thrasher. There is a new Apple laptop computer in the bottom right hand drawer of this desk along with a rucksack to transport it in. I hope you are au fait with computer technology.

Bon chance.’

The letter was unsigned.

William opened the bottom right hand drawer and removed a new Apple MacBook Pro laptop and a padded laptop messenger bag. He turned the computer on, slid the memory stick into one of the USB drives and waited for it to upload the file list onto the screen. William counted twenty-five separate Pages documents, more Numbers files and a large number of .jpeg files that he assumed would be photographs of some description. Clicking on the first Pages document at the top of the list, he muttered to himself,

“This might take a while.” when he saw it was one hundred and fifty pages long.

Thrasher stared at the screen of his computer, seeing nothing. He had decisions that needed deciding, plans to plan and thoughts that needed thinking. He wasn’t managing to achieve any of those. All he could think about was William Bacchus. He didn’t care how Bacchus was related to Ernest Sanderson or even if he was. Did it matter? To him no, to Felicity Cortez, it did. If Mr Bacchus could have an impact on her lifestyle, freedom or power he was a threat that needed to be considered. His possible connection to Ernest Sanderson and Thrasher’s loathing of Felicity were the only things keeping him alive. Thrasher had to discover the connection, if there was one, or invent one if there wasn’t. He needed Bacchus alive. For the moment. The intercom on his desk gave a low beep and then another. Startled away from his thoughts he slammed his hand onto it and said,

“Yes Siobhan. What is it? I thought I said no interruptions.”

“Mr Thrasher, you asked me to tell you when the temps had managed to put together a document from the shredding you gave me. They have.”

             
Bursting through his door into the outer office, he walked over to Siobhan’s desk. Without saying a word he held out a hand, took the letter she offered him and walked back into his office slamming the door behind him.

             
Felicity’s obsession with Ernest Sanderson and, as a consequence, his will, had ensured constant pressure from her to read the documents as he received them. Pressure that Sanderson had helped him deflect by his clever booby trapping of all of his documents. He had been led to believe by Sanderson at their initial meeting, that if the packages were opened incorrectly the contents would be destroyed. A puff of smoke or the rupturing of a phial of acid; very James Bond. A spurious deception he was sure; very clever though and not a deception he was in a position to challenge just in case the contents of the packages were destroyed. Through a friend of a friend, at one of the teaching hospitals, he’d arranged to have the package discreetly x-rayed. No explosives, although they had seen what they thought was a glass phial placed amongst the papers. This one, the letter Bacchus had shredded, had been received in a generic envelope, written on generic paper with an everyday ball pen. Had he wanted it read? Why? There hadn’t been much in the letter when he had read it after Sanderson had hired him. A greeting to his son, a few details of the bequest that needed further elaboration, they appeared to be afterthoughts that didn’t change the nature of the bequest, but clarified his intentions.  A bit of fatherly advice and then a suggestion that he uses Thrasher to assist him in any way he thought fit. That was why Bacchus’s behaviour had been so peculiar and unexpected.