Meanwhile Gardens (33 page)

“Maybe,” but Ollie wasn’t convinced.

Defiantly keeping Hum off the lead they set off towards the van. In his preoccupied state Ollie forgot to collect his tin of Kensal Green that Jake had so kindly kept for him.

“Get her ready,” Gorby pulled Beck to one side. “Do you need any more?” he whispered out of reach of Rion’s hearing.

“K?” Beck asked, referring to the horse tranquillizer they had been using to subdue the young girl.

Gorby nodded.

“There’s loads left.”

“Make sure nothing goes wrong.” Before Gorby left he took a quick look at Rion who sobbed on the mattress, her face to the wall.

“When do you expect to move?” asked Senior.

“Soon enough.”

Enough time, Senior hoped, to retrieve the jewels and return the bars to their original state.

Senior peered after Gorby as he left down the corridor. Satisfied that he had gone the leader of the twins returned to the Rosleagh vault. “Come on,” he went to unlock Rion’s section, “stop the waterworks.”

Still sobbing the young girl looked up at him. Her eyes were red from crying. In a rage she got up from the mattress and clung to the bars. “What do you want from me?” she screamed at the twins.

Senior rethought his plans to let her out and put the key back in his pocket.

Rion was scared.

But for the first time since her ordeal began she dared to
hope. The sight of Hum had at once confused her and raised her spirit. It meant she must still be near Meanwhile Gardens – at least she wasn’t in Ireland – it also meant people were looking for her. Where Hum was, Ollie and the rest couldn’t be far behind.

It didn’t take her long to figure out that she must be in the catacombs beneath Kensal Green Cemetery.

The twins observed her, Beck blankly, Senior more troubled. Rion felt her eyes well up again. She returned to the mattress, held the blankets tightly to her and stared at the damp, pockmarked bricks. After a few seconds she reached into her back pocket. Rion removed the cutting of Blondin and smoothed it out. She stared at the familiar image of the tightrope walker with the frying pan in hand, the waters of Niagara crashing beneath him.

What would he have done?

Behind her the twins carried on sawing, each minute bringing them closer to the Rosleagh jewels they were so determined to possess.

All was quiet when Ollie finished recounting the recent events in Bridlington and in the catacombs. Gem ‘n Em looked at each other in slight bewilderment before Auntie Em stood up and went to the phone, “Neil should know about this.” They listened in silence as she tried dialling up her tame inspector, but without success. “Neil’s off duty until tomorrow. They wouldn’t give me his mobile number.”

“We’ll phone him first thing,” Nicky reassured her.

“What do you think was going on in the catacombs?”

“Only Hum knows don’t you boy?” Ollie stroked the dog that had squeezed on the sofa beside him. “There aren’t
many times I wish he could talk but this is one of them.”

Hum pricked up his ears as if aware he was being talked about before scrambling from the sofa and dashing down the stairs. A knock at the door followed.

“I’ll get it,” Nicky said, following the dog.

Gem ‘n Em and Ollie strained to find out who it was but all they could hear were muffled voices. Moments later Jake appeared.

“Thought you should know the guards at the cemetery have blocked off Heron Point – there’s still a way in of course, at least to old lags like me,” he smiled. “Also,” Jake handed a battered tobacco tin to Ollie, “you forgot this.”

“Thanks mate. You didn’t have to bring it round though. I could have collected it tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well, I – ” Jake shuffled his feet before looking up.

Ollie wasn’t the only one to notice the slightly bashful smile that passed between Jake and Nicky.

“Would you like to stay for supper Jake?” Auntie Em asked quick as a flash. “We have plenty.”

R
ion woke to excited cries. She turned to see Beck reaching through the bars for the studded green velvet box that lay at the foot of the Earl of Rosleagh’s similarly clad coffin.

“This is it!” Senior crowed triumphantly.

Beck’s hands inched towards the jewel box, “Nearly there!” With a yelp he touched it, got his fingers around the back and manoeuvred it into his other hand. Slowly, slowly he pulled the studded box out until he held it, arms trembling, before his brother.

“Feel the weight of it!” Beck said impressed.

Rion looked on as Senior took the box from his twin. He balanced it in his hands and shook it slightly, smiling with satisfaction upon hearing the jewels inside rattle about.

Beck sat down on the Countess of Rosleagh’s elaborate chair. “Open it!” he implored.

Senior examined the box from all angles. He tipped it upside down, grinning each time the stones rolled from one end to the other. After a while he found what he was looking for.

“You don’t get craftsmanship like that any more,” he pointed to the rose on the Rosleagh coat of arms. “D’ye see?”

Beck looked closely at the studded velvet box. “See what?”

Rion tried to make out that she wasn’t interested but looked on from the corner of her eye.

With the thinnest blade on his penknife Senior lifted a petal of the intricately carved rose. “There,” he identified a tiny, narrow slit, “that’ll be it.” Senior poked his blade through the slot and wriggled it about. He smiled when the top of the box sprang open.

“Yes!” Beck clapped his hands in excitement.

Rion had given up the pretence of being disinterested and looked on with curiosity.

“Well?” Beck asked with bated breath as Senior peered in. “What do you see?”

Unable to bear the silence Beck grabbed the box from his brother. He reached in with one hand, rummaged around and brought up a shiny object the size and shape of an old worn cricket ball. The uneven rock was of so dark a red it was almost black.

“What the…” Beck’s voice trailed off as he looked at the object, trying to make out what on earth it was.

He placed the box on his knee and reached in. His fingers closed around smooth oval objects. Opening his palm Beck found two reddish/black stones there, both the size and shape of duck eggs. “Rubies?” he asked hopefully.

Senior pulled out another object from the jewel box. This was also of the same reddish/black as the others but was flatter and somewhat elliptical. He placed it with the cricket ball and duck eggs.

Beck looked at his brother as a child might upon discovering there was no such thing as Father Christmas. “They’re not jewels are they?”

“They might be,” Senior said hopefully. He scratched his head, trying for the life of him to think what they might be.

“Maybe this is what they look like uncut,” Beck began,
his imagination fired up once more. “Maybe this is how raw emeralds are.”

Senior caught some of his twin’s enthusiasm, “The darkest sapphires perhaps!”

Beck’s eyes flashed, “Or black diamonds!”

Rion scoffed. Having been at school more recently than the twins she had already guessed what they were. A chuckle grew into a chortle that grew and grew until she had to hold on to the bars to support herself, her body doubled up, convulsed with loud, rollicking laughter. She finally slowed to a more modest giggle that subsided into a half-smile and smirks.

“You don’t know what they are do you?” she asked.

Beck looked at her in annoyance whilst Senior turned away. Seeing their faces caused another outbreak of hoots and cackles. After her time in confinement Rion took release in the laughter that wracked her body. Each time the bouts subsided all it took was a glance at the objects or a look at the twins’ expressions for her to burst into uncontrollable hysterics.

Finally she was able to rein in her merriment. “Don’t you ever watch those programmes about the pharaohs and ancient Egypt?” she asked between giggles.

The twins looked at her suspiciously.

“If you did you’d know the secrets of embalming.”

“So?” Beck asked, his irritation at an all time high.

“So?” Rion managed to force down a giggle that was brewing in her belly. “You’d know they remove the internal organs first.”

Beck shrivelled his nose. “You mean they’re – ?”

Rion nodded, “His heart, kidneys and liver!” Rion felt the giggle grow and grow. “If you look in the ‘jewel box,’” she couldn’t help sniggering, “you’ll probably find his stomach and intestines as well.”

For some reason this struck her as funnier than the others. She doubled up again before collapsing on the bed, her eyes streaming tears of laughter. Rion wrapped her arms around her stomach that was aching from the strain.

Her laughter was unfortunately shortlived.

What happened next stunned them all into a horrified silence. A strange knocking was heard coming from inside the bars. They looked around before Senior gasped, “It’s the Earl!”

As one they looked at the shelf at eyelevel. The studded coffin in faded green velvet was beginning to rattle and jump about as if caught in an earthquake.

Or as if something inside was trying to get out.

The twins exchanged a horrified look. There was a second of silence before they all screamed.

Beck had turned a ghastly white. “Phone Gorby!” he gasped.

“But – ” Senior gestured to the space in the bars, to the mess, to the studded velvet box, “ – what are we going to tell him about this?”

“Just phone him!”

“And let me out of here!” Rion hugged the wall as far away as possible from the angry Earl. Although she was separated from the Rosleagh coffins by a heavy wire mesh it seemed much, much too close. “I’ll tell Gorby about the box,” she threatened.

Senior glared at the young girl before unlocking her side. “Is the drill still here?”

Beck swooped on a bag in the corner. He pulled out the Black & Decker, “Yes.”

“We’ll say we used it to try and do something to the coffin.”

Beck looked wildly at his brother, “Do what?”

“I don’t know – something!”

Senior threw the Earl’s internal organs into their box and hurriedly shoved it through the bars where it landed some way from the rattling, juddering coffin.

Gorby sat in front of the computer in the gloomy office, playing and replaying the film of Rion running laughing around the grave of Princess Sophia. The carefree young girl was perfect…she really was. The jangling office phone broke into his reverie. It was the twins – what would they do without him?

Senior clicked off the phone, “Thank God he was upstairs.” He grabbed Rion by the hand and ran into the corridor. Beck swiftly followed. “Leave all the talking to me,” Senior slammed the vault door. “And you,” he looked at Rion, “don’t say a word.”

They waited in the dimly lit corridor, flinching at every rattle they could hear through the vault door. After what seemed like an age they heard footsteps racing down the outside corridor. The heavy door was flung open and Gorby stood there, his head gleaming under the lightbulb.

“What on earth is going on?” he asked, slightly out of breath and more than surprised to see the twins and Rion outside the Rosleagh vault.

“The Earl!” Senior hissed.

“What?”

Beck gestured to the closed door that bore the oppressive coat of arms, “He’s alive!”

Gorby had now heard the peculiar rattling. He put his head to one side and listened. Fearlessly he opened the heavy door and walked in. The twins and Rion peered nervously after him.

“How long has this been going on?” Gorby asked in a remarkably cool manner, Rion thought, for someone standing before a rattling coffin.

“A couple of minutes,” Senior said hurriedly. “We drilled through the bars to see if – ”

Gorby stopped him. “You drilled through the bars?” he boomed, his voice echoing around the small space.

The twins looked at each other nervously.

“Yes,” Senior said almost timidly.

“With what?”

Beck rushed over to the bag in the corner and pulled out the Black & Decker. “With this,” he thrust the miniature powertool at Gorby before running back into the corridor.

“Have you a drill head?” asked Gorby. “Quick!”