Grindhelm's Key Page 9

  Once Deacon had satisfied himself that Trev was alone, he put the gun away and walked over.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Trev asked.

  ‘Have you seen anyone?’ Deacon asked.

  ‘When?’ said Trev. ‘There were three guys in here getting changed when I came in, but I think they all left while I was in the shower. What’s going on?’

  ‘The CCTV cameras in the gym went down,’ Deacon explained. ‘I knew the traitor had been in the network before, messing with things, so I set up an alarm on my computer. If any of the security systems goes offline unexpectedly, I get a warning.’

  ‘And you knew I was down here,’ said Trev.

  Deacon nodded. ‘Right. You’re down here and suddenly the cameras go off? It didn’t seem like a coincidence. It was possible that something was about to happen to you, so I ran down here.’

  ‘Thanks for your concern,’ Trev said, and he meant it. He found Deacon annoying most of the time, but credit where it was due: the bloke had legged it down there to protect him. ‘I thought there was someone in here when I got out of the shower, but I didn’t see anyone. What about the two chaps who were doing bench-presses out there? Did they see anything?’

  ‘The gym’s empty,’ Deacon said.

  ‘Where did they go, then?’ Trev frowned. Maybe the two men intended to shower and change at home, and that was why they’d left without using the locker room.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Deacon replied. ‘You said you thought there was someone in here when you got out of the shower?’

  ‘I heard a footstep, or thought I did,’ said Trev. ‘Then the door swinging shut. It was probably just somebody coming in to use their locker.’

  ‘Then why did the cameras go down?’ said Deacon, shaking his head. ‘Something was going to happen.’

  ‘Then why didn’t it?’ Trev asked. ‘I was in the shower. About as vulnerable as I was going to get. If the traitor had been in here and wanted to do me harm, I was the proverbial sitting duck.’

  ‘Maybe they were warned off, or something spooked them.’

  ‘Well the sight of me in the shower would be enough to spook anyone, in fairness.’

  Deacon scowled at him. ‘You need to take this more seriously. This could’ve been another attempt on your life.’

  ‘But you said that couldn’t happen,’ Trev couldn’t resist pointing out. ‘Something about it being like “attacking someone in the middle of a police station”, wasn’t it?’

  The scowl deepened. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to wander off on your own.’

  ‘I didn’t wander off, I went for a shower.’ Trev tightened the towel around his waist. ‘Look, could you give me a couple of minutes to get dressed, please?’

  ‘I’ll be outside.’ With a last glance around the room, Deacon went back out into the gym.

  Trev waited for the door to close and reached into his locker for the piece of paper. It was plain white and had been folded in half twice. He opened it out. There were a few words printed on it in block capitals.

  GO TO HANGMAN’S POND

  ALONE

  TELL NO-ONE

  What the hell? Trev stared at the paper for a few moments before remembering that Deacon was waiting for him. He hurried into his clothes and stashed the paper in his pocket, still pondering the meaning of the message. Hangman’s Pond was a local landmark in Brackenford, located just outside the town. In the seventeenth century it had been used by the townspeople for subjecting suspected witches to the “swimming test”; someone who sank was considered innocent, while someone who floated was clearly using witchcraft to preserve themselves. Those people had been pulled out of the water and hanged on a gallows that had been built next to the pond, which of course had given it its name.

  In the majority of cases, the so-called witches were just harmless old women with a knowledge of medicinal herbs, or people unlucky enough to be publicly denounced by someone with an axe to grind. Eventually, though, they found a woman who really was a witch. Of sorts.

  Dorothy Walcott was a woman blessed – or cursed, depending on your viewpoint – with unusually strong Sight. She’d fled to Brackenford from East Anglia to escape the purges orchestrated by Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled “Witchfinder General”, which ironically brought her into contact with Hopkins’ secret master, Isaiah Sneade. Sneade was a religious fanatic with a fervent hatred of witches; he’d bankrolled Hopkins, using the chaos the Witchfinder General caused as cover for his own activities. He worked in the shadows, secretly dispensing his warped idea of “justice” on people and supernatural creatures alike.

  Encountering Walcott, he’d identified that she had the Sight, and at a similar strength to his own. What had passed between them wasn’t known, but Sneade quickly denounced her as a witch. She was put to the test and executed at Hangman’s Pond, but her spirit had been strong enough, and angry enough, to cling to the earthly plane. Sneade had used his own power to try and banish her, with the result that her soul had been torn in half. One part remained anchored to the area around Hangman’s Pond, while the other was sent into whatever lay beyond the mortal realm. Both were aware of the other, and the earth-bound part of Dorothy Walcott received visions of the past, present and future from its lost half.

  This meant two things: firstly, that Walcott could give you a terrifyingly accurate horoscope, and secondly, that she was gold-standard crazy. The kind of crazy that sits in a bath full of baked beans on top of a mountain in a thunderstorm, cackling wildly to itself. And not only that, she had a particular loathing for the Custodians, whom she saw as the modern equivalent of men like Isaiah Sneade. For their part the Custodians had kept her existence secret, in the hope that they could use her ability to predict the future to their advantage, but she would only give them predictions in groups of three, two of which were always false. Frustrated by this, the Custodians abandoned their efforts and left Walcott’s spirit to slumber in the depths of Hangman’s Pond.

  And slumber she had, until one day she emerged to give three predictions to an apprehensive Trev Irwin. As was her habit only one of them was correct, but as all three had been predictions of his death it was difficult to pick a preferred option. Walcott was clever, though. The fact that Trev was still alive despite a correct prediction of his death was evidence of that.

  He had mixed feelings about the episode. His initial thought was that Walcott had, for some reason, decided to torment someone at random and had settled on him as her victim. As time had gone on, however, he’d become less sure of that explanation. There had been a plot to kill him and Walcott’s predictions had led to a state of increased vigilance on his part that could well have saved his life. So had there been a deeper motive behind the old witch’s actions? Had she deliberately intervened to save Trev? It wasn’t a question he’d ever asked of her – he found Walcott’s company less desirable than a dinner date with Freddy Krueger – but it was something he’d turned over in his mind on many occasions.

  He couldn’t think of a reason the note’s author would want him to go to Hangman’s Pond other than to talk to Dorothy Walcott. And that, inevitably, would mean predictions of his future. Another warning, perhaps. Or maybe she can tell me where Sarah is, Trev thought. That would certainly make the trip worthwhile, although he was less enthused by the instructions to go “alone” and “tell no-one”. It was possible the note was intended to lure him into an ambush, but that didn’t make much sense considering that he could easily have been murdered while he was bollock-naked in the shower and unable to defend himself.

  He was still pondering the note and its implications when he left the changing room and joined Deacon in the gym.

  ‘I found your two weight-lifters,’ said Deacon as Trev approached. ‘They’re in the canteen.’

  As if on cue the two men wandered back into the room, each clutching a sweaty towel and a bottle of mineral water. They nodded at Deacon, ignoring Trev, and went back to the weights benches.

  ‘Did they see a
nyone?’ Trev asked.

  ‘No,’ said Deacon. ‘But they were sitting with their backs to the door. They didn’t even notice me charging past with a gun in my hand.’

  ‘This whole thing is weird,’ Trev said. ‘Trying to get at me when I’m alone in the changing room suggests opportunism, but taking out the security cameras first suggests planning.’

  Deacon gave him the faintly surprised look he always did when Trev said something sensible or insightful in his presence. Needless to say it was an expression Trev hadn’t seen that often.

  ‘I was thinking along the same lines,’ Deacon replied. ‘Shutting down the cameras was a risk. It was bound to be noticed. So why take that risk and not follow through with the attack, assuming that was their intent?’

  Trev shrugged. ‘Maybe the cameras going down was just a coincidental systems glitch.’

  ‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ said Deacon.

  ‘Coincidentally, neither do I.’

  Deacon sighed. ‘Well regardless of the reason, we should be grateful that they didn’t go through with whatever was planned.’

  Except that they did, Trev thought, even if it was just leaving me a note. Whoever did it was very keen not to be identified, if they killed the cameras first. Are they even on my side? Have I now got a secret ally to match my secret enemy?

  Out loud he said: ‘Yeah. But it doesn’t fill me with confidence about staying here overnight.’

  ‘We’ll make sure you’re not left on your own,’ Deacon said. ‘You’re better off here than taking the chance of running into Jack Smith again.’

  ‘To be honest I don’t think I’d feel safe if I went and hid on the dark side of the moon,’ Trev replied with a shrug. ‘If I’ve got to die, I may as well do it in the comfort of my own home.’

  ‘I can’t force you to stay,’ said Deacon. ‘But I want to go on record as saying that this is a bad idea.’

  ‘Understood.’ Trev stretched, eliciting a series of creaks and pops from his back. ‘Shall we go and see what Granddad’s managed to dig out of the archives?’

  The position of Senior Archivist didn’t really live up to its grandiose title. Jane Woods was the only archivist on staff at Birmingham, which made her the senior by default. At one time she would have been part of a team, but tightening budgets and computerisation of records had whittled away the numbers over the years. Her office was crammed with filing cabinets, all stuffed with a variety of documents. Woods herself was a petite woman in her mid-forties, with a mop of frizzy blonde hair framing her bespectacled face. She’d taken over the position from a man called Jack Rock, who’d been murdered while trying to protect Trev. As a result Trev always felt somewhat uncomfortable being in the Senior Archivist’s office.

  Trev knocked and entered to find Woods sitting at her desk – most of which was invisible due to the stacks of papers, files and books covering it – with Granddad opposite her in an orange plastic chair that looked like it had fallen through a time-warp from the nineteen-seventies. Granddad had a pile of papers on his lap that he was sorting through with the kind of patient care Trev had come to expect. The old man loved doing research. He demonstrated the same kind of enthusiasm for a pile of musty old books that Trev showed for a large pizza and a pint of lager.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ Deacon asked, following Trev into the room. With four people inside the office felt even more cramped.

  ‘We haven’t found much at all,’ said Granddad. ‘Which suggests one of three possibilities.’

  ‘I’ll bite,’ said Trev. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Firstly, that the Eyes of Nona are a new organisation, and therefore very little has been written about them,’ said Woods. She had a soft Black Country accent.

  ‘Secondly, that they’re such an insignificant group that nobody’s bothered to write anything about them,’ said Granddad.

  ‘Or thirdly, that they’re so secret that they’ve made sure very little is written about them,’ Woods finished.

  ‘It’ll be the third one,’ said Trev, without hesitation. ‘That sounds like the worst possibility.’

  ‘Sadly I think you’re right,’ Granddad said. ‘The one reference we’ve found for them dates back to the eighteenth century and indicates that the Eyes of Nona were both well-established and dangerous. If we’ve barely heard anything about them in all that time since, then they must be very good at covering their tracks.’

  Deacon’s face was expressionless. ‘What was the reference you found?’

  ‘It’s an extract from an old journal,’ Woods explained, ‘written in seventeen eighty-nine by a Custodian called Robert Higginbotham. He worked in Leeds. The extract we’ve got is a bit vague, but we’ve got a definite reference to “Nona” and “eyes”.’

  ‘OK, let’s hear it,’ said Deacon.

  Granddad took a thin sheaf of yellowed pages from the desk and shuffled through them. He found the page he wanted, pushed his glasses up his nose, and began to read.

  ‘I am guilty of a grave error. Like so many men before me, and no doubt many to follow, I have allowed the lure of easy money to suppress my good judgement, and now I must face a reckoning.

  In the course of my duties with the Custodians I have earned a reputation as a man with a talent for finding things; a natural affinity for the hunt, for the following of a trail. If I set myself the task of locating something – or indeed, someone – it was a rare occasion that I did not succeed. It was a reputation of which I was greatly proud, and I failed to heed the Book of Proverbs: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”.

  My own destruction is at hand, of that I am sure.

  A man approached me, and subjected me to outrageous flattery regarding my talents. He offered me a substantial sum of money to locate and deliver to him a particular object, an unremarkable small brass wheel. It seemed a simple enough task, and I readily agreed to his terms. I now know that I could not have struck a worse bargain had I been dealing with Lucifer himself.

  The deeds I committed, and the depths to which I sank, to finally retrieve the object, this so-called “Key”, are a matter of great shame and regret to me and I will not relate them here. But I can take a small measure of solace in the knowledge that when I discovered the true nature of the Key, and its intended purpose, I disposed of it as best I could. I have damned myself; but at least I have not forced anyone else to share my fate.

  My time grows short. I have used my knowledge of the city to hide, but I am a marked man. Nona will neither forget nor forgive my actions. Her eyes are everywhere. I feel them on me, even in this darkened cell of a room. They are close. There is a net around me. I cannot see it, though I surely feel it. And it is closing.

  I can only pray that the good Lord will show His mercy to a poor sinner who sought only to provide for his family.’

  There was a long silence after Granddad finished reading.

  ‘So… what happened to him?’ Trev finally asked.

  ‘He disappeared,’ said Woods, ‘and he was never found.’

  Twelve

  There was a brief discussion about the journal entry. They agreed that a) The Eyes of Nona, as an organisation, had to be over two hundred years old, b) that it sounded very much like a dangerous organisation, and c) that Trev should probably shut up and stop moaning. Although Higginbotham’s confession was useful in that it confirmed the Eyes’ existence, it offered little else in terms of hard fact. There was nothing to shed any light on Nona’s identity, or where the organisation had been based, or what their motives were. Woods said that she’d continue working through the archive to see if there was anything further to be found, but she didn’t sound hopeful. If the group had existed for over two hundred years without coming to the Custodians’ attention, it was obviously very adept at covering its tracks.

  Leaving the office, Trev soon found himself embroiled in an argument with Granddad and Deacon about his refusal to stay overnight with the Custodians. Granddad agree
d with Deacon’s assertion that Trev was safer in Birmingham than at home; Trev’s counter-argument was that they knew the traitor wanted him dead, while Smith needed him alive. By that logic he was in much less danger at home, though privately he lamented the fact that hanging out with a psychopathic zombie was the safest option available to him.

  Eventually Trev lost his temper and stormed off. His dramatic exit was somewhat spoiled when he had to come back and ask Granddad for a lift home.

  The atmosphere in the car was tense. Trev sat and stared out of the passenger window at the snow-draped streets sliding past. To his right, Granddad was focused on navigating the treacherous conditions while simultaneously sending out a steady stream of silent disapproval in his grandson’s direction. Trev pretended that he was unaware of it. Most of the time he was happy to fight his corner in a verbal duel, but he’d never enjoyed arguing with Granddad. He owed the old man a lot, from offering him an escape from his disinterested, workaholic parents when he was a child, to steering him through the revelation of his developing Sight and discovery of the supernatural world as an adult. On that basis Trev felt a twinge of guilt every time he disagreed with Granddad or ignored his advice.

  The inescapable fact was that they simply saw the world in a different way. For Granddad, things were binary – good-versus-evil, Light-versus-Shadow, with the Custodians firmly in the former camp. Trev, a man to whom cynicism was second nature, saw this as hopelessly naïve. He viewed the Custodians much as he did the “normal” police; a mixed blessing at best. He didn’t doubt that there were good men and women within the organisation who were set on making the world a better place, but he hadn’t seen a huge amount of altruism flowing through the Custodians’ HQ. He suspected that for most of them, being a Custodian was simply a job. Albeit one with more access to guns and magic swords than most.