All Sorts of Possible (25 page)

The kettle clicked off as he stood by it and Jiff walked into the kitchen.

‘Mason wants his tea.’

Daniel held up the mug with the teabag in it. ‘Just coming.’

‘I’ll have one ’n’all. Milk and two sugars. Like Mason. There’s some digestives knocking about somewhere too.’ Jiff fumbled with the Tupperware boxes till he
found the half-open packet. He stood eating a biscuit, watching Daniel make the tea. When he smiled, little crumbs dropped from the corners of his mouth.

A large section of the cellar had been covered with black plastic sheeting, held down at its four corners by cement blocks. It hissed like an angry thundercloud tethered to the
floor as Mason walked across it, sipping his tea.

Sitting on a wooden chair in the corner of the room was Rosie, Jiff stood next to her and drank from his mug too and said nothing.

Mason nodded approvingly. ‘I’m going to make you chief tea-maker from now on, Daniel. You have many talents.’ Mason smiled at Rosie. ‘You both do. That’s why
I’m sure one last push is what we need to find this flask.’

Mason put his tea down on the floor and motioned at Jiff to do the same. The two of them walked across to a chest freezer that was in the far corner of the cellar and both started to put on pair
of black leather gloves which had been sitting on a chair.

The tiny red light in the bottom corner of the freezer’s front panel was illuminated, as bright as a cherry. Daniel was still wondering what might be inside as the two men stood at either
end and heaved up the lid.

They lifted out Lawson’s frozen body, the ice cracking and falling from his shirt, his black hair brittle with frost.

Daniel heard Rosie gasp and he went to her and put his arms round her as the two men struggled with the heavy frozen body.

‘I’ve found it. The flask,’ he whispered as he hugged her close.

The body bumped down on the black sheeting like a rock when it was laid down.

Blood had frozen in icy pearls around Lawson’s mouth. The stump of his arm looked like the end of a frozen joint.

When the leather fingers of the men’s gloves peeled up off his body, they made little popping sounds.

The cold flowed like dust over the lip of the freezer as Mason bent down and rapped Lawson on his forehead. ‘Anyone home?’ He grinned and turned round to look up at Daniel.
‘About as talkative as your dad.’ Jiff laughed. ‘Course he might tell us a few things using the fit. Why don’t we give it a try? One big push. I’ve been saving him in
case he might be useful. In case he wasn’t telling me everything I wanted to know.’

Jiff slapped the lid of the freezer shut. Mason sat down in a rickety wooden chair. He plucked an iPhone from his pocket and dialled a number.

When Frank’s face appeared on the screen in a Skype call, Mason beamed. ‘Who you got there with you, Frank?’

‘Rosie’s gran,’ came back the tinny reply.

‘And what are you doing?’

‘Having a cup of tea.’

‘So are we! Daniel makes the best, Frank. Even better than you!’

‘I doubt it.’

Mason turned the phone round so Rosie and Daniel could see the screen. With a free finger, he pointed at the frozen body of Lawson.

‘You don’t need him warmed up, do you? To help, I mean? How about the gloves? Do you need them?’

‘Stop,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘Just stop. We think we know where the flask is.’ Mason looked at Daniel for some time, saying nothing. Lawson’s body was already
beginning to melt,
drip-drip-dripping
on to the black sheeting.

‘I knew it,’ said Mason. ‘I knew you were lying.’ He chuckled and slapped his hand on his thigh. ‘So show me where you think it is. Then we’ll figure out what
to do next.’

Daniel pulled up the false floorboard in the pantry at Ashwell Lodge and took out the silver-plated box. When Mason reached for it, Daniel shook his head.

‘There’s more,’ he said and opened the box, revealing the severed finger inside with the black twine around it. Daniel pointed to the symbol on the wall. ‘We think there
must be four of these symbols to go with the compartments in the box but so far we’ve only found three. I’ll show you the others.’

And he did.

Mason, Jiff and Rosie followed him through the rooms of Ashwell Lodge, with Frank watching them on Skype as Mason held out his iPhone. ‘He’s my insurance policy,’ said Mason.
‘I’ve got no reason to trust you at all.’

Daniel showed him where the golden wedding band was hidden and the lock of hair.

He put them in the compartments of the silver box and hooked the pieces of twine to the clasp in the centre of the lid in the same way the finger was attached.

‘There’s one more item to go in,’ said Daniel. ‘But we don’t know where it is. We think it’s hidden somewhere in one of the downstairs rooms, at least
that’s what Rosie saw. But we couldn’t find it.’

‘Which room?’ asked Mason.

‘We’ll show you.’

Daniel and Rosie led them into the room that might once have been the dining room. He pointed at the mattress. ‘We sat here for some time, trying to work it out. But Rosie didn’t see
anything.’

Rosie was watching Daniel. Listening to his every word. She licked her lips. ‘I might feel ready to try again,’ she said.

Mason’s eyes sparkled. ‘Go on, Rosie. I’d like that very much.’

When she closed her eyes, Daniel knew she was pretending to make the fit. There was no pain in his chest. No blood from her nose. The strain in her face was an act and, when he realized, he put
his hand to his chest as if pretending to feel something, making her performance seem all the more real.

‘It’s somewhere,’ she whispered. ‘It’s somewhere in this room.’

‘Are you sure?’ Mason was walking around, inspecting the walls for another symbol. ‘I don’t see anything. There’s nothing here.’

‘It is,’ she hissed. When she opened her eyes and sat down on her haunches, she looked up at Mason. ‘I need a rest.’

Daniel pointed to the fireplace. ‘Why don’t you go and check that end of the room? I’ll look this end while Rosie takes a moment.’

Daniel listened as Jiff and Mason searched the wall and then knelt down and inspected the hearth. He held his breath as he listened to them rooting around like pigs in the dust and the
grime.

When Jiff stopped and cursed excitedly, he didn’t look round. He waited for them to prise up the loose tile.

‘We’ve found it!’ shouted Mason. ‘We’ve got it.’ Daniel turned and saw Mason holding up the human tooth by its black piece of twine. ‘Give me the box.
Let me have it.’

Mason put the tooth in the compartment and hooked the piece of twine round the clasp.

‘What do you think happens now?’ asked Mason.

He was about to ask again when Daniel pointed. ‘Look,’ he said.

A misty, shadowy figure was emerging from out of the floor and drifting towards him.

‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’ whispered Mason. He gripped Daniel and turned him to face the ghost. ‘Can you see him, boy? Can you?’

‘Yes,’ whispered Daniel. He thought he heard Jiff cursing, but his heart was pounding too loudly to hear properly as the ghost drifted closer, just a dark silhouette in the shape of
a man.

‘Where’s Lawson?’ it asked, in a voice that shimmered all around them as if coming from the walls of the building itself.

‘We’re friends of his,’ said Daniel. ‘Lawson’s dead. We’ve come to collect a flask. Is it here?’

The figure drifted towards Daniel and pressed its fingers into the boy’s chest, making him gasp, then pulled them free.

‘A friend indeed,’ said the ghost. ‘Yes, the flask is here.’ It floated towards Mason and looked at him. ‘I’m the keeper of the flask. I decide who has it.
It’s your fate to be the one. You’re destined to have the flask. That’s what you’ve always believed, isn’t it? That you and this boy met for a reason.’

Mason nodded. Little flecks of spit were caught in the corners of his mouth and he licked them away. ‘Yes,’ he said in a trembling voice. ‘
Yes.
’

The cellar was lit by three cross-beams of light from Mason’s and Jiff’s phones and Daniel’s too. There was no reception down beneath the house and, before
the Skype connection had been lost, Mason had told Frank to stay with Agatha. But the man hadn’t seemed too pleased, worried about missing out on his cut that Mason had promised if they found
the flask, cursing and shouting, his tongue flicking out like a viper’s over his cleft lip. But Mason didn’t seemed too bothered, shouting that Frank was paranoid before clicking off
the phone.

The ghost pointed at a section of wall and asked Mason to push in one particular brick. As soon as he did, a trapdoor in the cellar floor sprang open and Mason strode towards it and peered down
into the dark hole. The man took a few careful strides down the slippery stone steps until he was low enough to be able to stoop and see what was below, using his phone. A large dark room.
Windowless. The walls damp and tinged with green.

Mason waved Jiff and Daniel and Rosie closer and the beams of light from the two phones moved with them across the floor until they were standing above the stone steps beside the trapdoor. Mason
beckoned Jiff down a few steps and they panned their phones round the secret chamber.

‘There!’ shouted Mason. ‘Look, right there, on the far wall.’

When Daniel stooped to look too, he saw a golden flask set into the wall at the end of the chamber. It looked exactly like the one he had hidden in his pocket.

‘Daniel,’ said Mason excitedly, a big hand sweeping across his sweaty brow. ‘I want you and Rosie to remain at the top of the steps and keep your light focused down so I can
see where I’m going. Jiff, stay where you are, and keep your phone straight. I want to see what we’ve got here.’

Daniel stood beside Rosie, shining his phone past Jiff’s humped back, and lighting up the steps. Mason walked carefully down and stood on the last step. ‘Hello!’ he shouted as
if expecting someone to be there. ‘Hello!’ He turned and grinned at Jiff. ‘Keep that light directly on the flask so I can see it,’ he said and then he turned and stepped
down on to the stone floor.

He crossed one flagstone, and then a second, and then a third, walking along the shaft of light from his own phone as if it was a balance beam. The ghost was beside him, drifting above the stone
floor, telling him that the flask had been put here by its maker, Francis Green, and that Lawson had known about it and had wanted to keep it a secret from him. Mason was chuntering and cursing,
calling Lawson all manner of names.

And then there was a click, like a bone snapping, as he stood on a segment of floor and heard the trapdoor at the top of the stairs flipping up.

As Daniel and Rosie jerked sideways so as not to be hit by the door closing back down, the last thing they saw was Jiff spinning round, humpbacked, to look at them, his eyes wide, and the phone
in his hand lighting up a spot on the ceiling of the cellar.

And then the trapdoor locked shut back into the cellar floor.

Daniel heard shouts. Muffled through the stone. And then he realized he could hear nothing, that his imagination was only telling him that, and he turned to look at Rosie.

Inside the chamber, Mason was whirling round like a devil. He didn’t know which way to go, towards the flask or back to the steps where Jiff was lying, knocked out by the
trapdoor which had swung over and hit him, his phone beside him.

The ghost was telling Mason things he could barely hear above his own cursing. That Francis Green had made the trap to protect the flask from men like him. That Lawson had discovered where the
flask had really been hidden in the house. That he had found the trap and had come up with a plan to get rid of Mason.

‘You killed me,’ said the ghost. ‘Just like I’m going to kill you.’

‘I’m not dying. I’m not,’ roared Mason. ‘You can’t do anything to me.’ He went to the flask on the wall and reached out for it, only to find that it was
a picture drawn with such skilful perspective that it looked real from all angles.

Mason roared again. ‘Let me out,’ he screamed, like some wild animal caged. ‘Daniel!’ he screamed at the ceiling.

But then he stopped when he heard the sound of rushing water.

‘What’s that? What’s happening?’ The ghost was drifting higher as two sluice gates opened in the walls at either end of the chamber and water started gushing in.

Mason roared again as the cold water quickly started filling the room. But the ghost was gone. Vanished through the walls.

The ghost led Daniel and Rosie to a body that was hidden in a priest hole in the wall of a large room downstairs. The corpse was covered with car air fresheners and the hole
was full of a sweet chemical smell.

Dust moved in tiny tumbleweeds as Daniel leant down over the curled-up body, his movement disturbing them. Something had nibbled one of the ears. Spiderwebs trailed over the dead man and caught
the dust and grime. The clothes had something white and furred growing on them in patches. Daniel put his head to one side and held his breath as he took the flask out of his pocket.

After the ghost had told him what to do, he unscrewed the cap and paused, wondering how much of the liquid he should drop on to the corpse’s head. Two drops at first. And then another two.
And one for good luck.

They all disappeared. Nothing trickled out of the hairline down the neck or the throat. The body had soaked up every drop.

‘This is the secret of the flask,’ said the ghostly man. ‘This is what Lawson knew would happen,’ it said as its outline started to fade away. And then it vanished as if
someone had turned off a projector and the image was gone.

Daniel and Rosie waited to see what was going to happen.

But when they heard footsteps running round the paving stones outside the house, and the front door being pushed open, they squeezed each other’s hands.

‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’ asked Rosie and Daniel could only shake his head.

They stood up and turned to face the doorway as they heard feet frantically running in the hall.

‘Mason?’ shouted a voice. ‘Mason!’