Darque Wants (90 page)

Thena clasped her hand over her mouth, giving a little gasp. “Is that what I think it is?”

Dorian nodded. “ I didn’t really need the bathroom. I just said that so I could go into the bedroom and have a good snoop around. I guessed he probably kept the pocket watch up there somewhere. Found it in his dressing table drawer.”

“Dorian! You can’t just…do that!”

“We need it. We can try to get something from it. A vision. I could sense it even before I went up there. I know it will work. I can feel it practically burning a hole in my palm. If we both touch it….”

“But it’s stealing!” she protested.

“I know, I know, and I ordinarily would never do something like that but…these are extraordinary circumstances, Thena. And we’ll take it back to him afterwards, I promise. I’m not just going to keep it. I’m not actually stealing it, merely….borrowing it without asking.” He winked at her, turning on the charm.

She sighed and rolled her eyes, unable to resist him. “Alright, fine. But you’re the one taking it back and explaining why we took it, and I’m not intervening if he gets mad and decides to punch you or something.”

Dorian laughed. “Fair enough, I suppose. Now…shall we do this?” He offered out the watch and his eyes sparkled.

She knew what he was asking. Biting her lip, she reached out and placed her hand on top of Dorian’s, the two of them holding the pocket watch together.

The watch in someone’s hand; open, ticking.

It is clicked shut and replaced back in a pocket.

Then the owner of the watch is revealed. Charles Smythe.

He is in a park, standing near a fountain.

It is late at night. He is standing in front of a hole he has dug. He tosses something in and then begins to cover it up.

The artefact.

“I know where that park is,” Dorian gasped as he pulled back, breaking the visi.on. “We passed it on the way in. It’s about half an hour from here. Come on.”

He started up the car again and away they went, racing off on the next part of their thrilling treasure hunt.

They called in at a DIY shop along the way and bought themselves a shovel, then parked up and headed into the park. It was the middle of the day still and a few people were around staring at them but they paid no attention; too focused on what they had to do to care, and even as they began to dig up the grass in front of the fountain where they had witnessed the vision, nobody approached them or tried to say anything.

Nobody except John.

They had dug a hole about four feet deep when they found it. The shovel connected with something hard and a loud clanging sound rang out; metal against metal.

“That’s it!” Thena cried, her eyes alight with excitement as Dorian tossed the shovel to one side and they both dropped down to their knees, scrambling amongst the dirt to reach forwards and draw out the small box.

“I’ll be having that, thank you,” came a voice behind them.

The two of them spun round, surprised to find John towering above them, holding a knife.

Thena had always suspected he was slightly loose wired – ever since he’d flung a cup across the room when she’d broken up with him, but this was a step beyond. She stared up at him in disbelief.

“John, what are you…”

But before she could even finish her sentence, John had leaned in and snatched the box from Dorian’s hands with one swift move, the pair of them so shocked by his appearance and the fact that he was armed that they were both far too slow to react.

“Mr Shackleton will pay me a lot of money for this,” he said smugly. “I’ve been working for him all along. Bet you never saw that coming?” He gave a laugh, then, whilst Dorian and Thena were still gawping in amazement, raced off with the box tucked under his arm, presumably with the artefact inside it.

“Quick!” Dorian leapt to his feet. “We have to get it back!”

The two of them gave chase, abandoning the hole they’d dug in the ground and the shovel, along with a very confused old man who had watched the whole thing, and set off running after John.

Unfortunately, he’d had a rather good head start, as well as the element of surprise, and he had disappeared through the trees and out the other side of the park before they’d had chance to catch up with him.

They ended up panting with their hands on their knees, bent forwards trying to get their breath back, and feeling utterly defeated.

“What now?” Dorian asked.

“Can’t believe John is working for Shackleton…” Thena shook her head in amazement. “All this time? How long? How long has this been going on?”

“I don’t know…but what are we going to do?”

“We have to get it back. We can’t let him sell it to Shackleton.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Dorian suggested. “No offence but…John doesn’t seem like the brightest guy. Perhaps if we could just reason with him; explain what the consequences are if Shackleton has this much power. I mean, nobody should have that much power, and especially not him.”

“Maybe…it’s worth a shot, I suppose.”

“It’s the only shot we’ve got left now.”

*****

The drive back home was long and quiet. Thena attempted to contact John via phone; calling him and leaving messages, then texting. He didn’t pick up, and didn’t respond to any of the texts. He was ignoring them.

It was Dorian’s idea to contact his agent and get her to assist with some publicity, arranging meet ups with newspapers and magazines. They couldn’t keep silent about this anymore; not now Shackleton was about to get his hands on all three pieces of the artefact. They decided to go public with the information they had learnt so far, and to try and spread the word. Even if they weren’t believed, at least people would be talking about it, and it might encourage someone else to come forward; someone who knew what Shackleton was really up to.

Before the end of that day, it was being talked about on the local news and on several websites, spreading like wildfire as a result of Dorian’s minor celebrity status. Leaving things to stew online for a while, they turned their attention back to the problem of John. They knew that he was planning to meet Shackleton at some point, in order to hand over the piece, but they didn’t know when or where. It literally felt like a race against time to stop him before Shackleton managed to complete the artefact and put all three pieces together, making him the most powerful man on the planet.

With him still not answering any of his phone calls, they did the only thing they could think of, and turned up outside his flat, driving up and turning off the engine, sitting quietly in the car and watching for a while. It was late; near to midnight, and everything on the street was quiet and still. The lights in his flat were still on, as were a few others in the building.

“He’s not going to let us in,” Thena mumbled. “This is a complete waste of time.”

It had all been Dorian’s idea.

“He doesn’t have to let us in,” shrugged Dorian. “He has to come out sooner or later, to go to his meeting with Shackleton.”

“Well, it’s a bit late now, isn’t it? He’s hardly going to go tonight.”

“Maybe not. But like I said, he’ll have to go sooner or later so…we’ll just sit right here and wait for him until he does.”

“We’re just going to camp outside his house?”

“Why not?” Dorian reached for her hand across the seat and took it, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “As long as we’re here together, it doesn’t really matter where we spend the night. To me it doesn’t anyway.”

She smiled. “You’re sweet. But you’re right. It doesn’t. And…I suppose it’s a good enough idea.”

And Dorian was right. Although they spent the entire night in the car, taking it in turns to nap and occasionally the two of them both sat awake, quietly talking about various different subjects to pass the time, it wasn’t actually as bad as she had expected, and soon enough daylight was approaching.

For a long while, there was no movement in the house. The lights had all gone off at around one in the morning and the curtains had not been drawn since.

Then, at seven thirty, something happened.

A shadow moved cross the closed curtain. Someone was awake in there. Thena wasn’t; but she soon was when Dorian shook her. “I think he’s up. Thena…”

“Mmm?” She murmured sleepily.

“John’s awake. Something’s going on in there. I think he’s getting ready to go out.”

When he finally emerged some half an hour later, the two of them leapt out of the car simultaneously and dashed over to meet him, quite literally stopping him in his tracks and accosting him, laying their hands upon him to stop him going anywhere, not giving him any chance to react to the surprise

“John, we have to talk to you!” Thena cried.

“What the hell?! Get off me!”

But almost as soon as they’d touched him, they were both hit by a powerful vision.

John, earlier the previous day, leaving the park with the box tucked under his arm.

He takes out his phone and makes a call.

Shackleton’s voice can very clearly be heard on the other end.

“Tomorrow at 11am. 24 Winchester Road.”

“Get off!” John yelled again, shoving their hands away and jogging to his car.

Thena was tempted to run after him, but Dorian touched her arm and pulled her back. They didn’t need to now; they had what they wanted.

“But what are we going to do now?” she asked desperately once they had watched John drive away. “I mean sure, we know where they’re meeting and what time but…we can’t exactly just turn up and demand they give us the artefacts back. Shackleton’s a dangerous man, and he’s going to have all his thugs with him.”

“I don’t know,” Dorian answered quietly. “I’m sorry, Thena. I really don’t know. I’m all out of bright ideas.”

The shrill sound of Dorian’s mobile phone broke through the quiet of the early morning. He sighed and took it out, not expecting it to be anyone particularly interesting. But then he frowned at the screen, slightly confused.

“It’s…it’s Harvey.”

“Harvey?” Thena looked at him, not picking up the significance of the name initially.

“Harvey Jenson. I…gave him my number when I first visited…just in case he remembered anything else he wanted to tell me.”

“Maybe he has?”

The phone continued to ring repeatedly. They both stared at it.

“Answer it,” Thena finally urged.

He did do, bringing it up cautiously to his ear, then deciding to put it on speakerphone instead, so that they could both hear. “H-hello?”

“Is this Dorian?”

“Yes. Is that you, Harvey?”

“It is,” the voice on the other end said. “There was an article about you on the telly. About Shackleton. The people on the telly were mocking it, calling it a conspiracy theory perpetrated by a crazy psychic.”

“Yeah, I pretty much expected them to do that,” Dorian sighed.

“Only I know better, don’t I?”

“Yeah, you do.”

“What’s he done now, Dorian? What’s he done? Is there anything I can do to help? I want to help.”

“I’m…really not sure there’s that much you can do, Harvey. I mean…no offence but…you’re in a retirement home and – “

“Not anymore!” Harvey interrupted, to both Dorian and Thena’s surprise. “I walked out. It’s not a prison, you can leave at anytime. And I have done.”

“Harvey…what’s happening? Where are you?” Dorian asked urgently.

“You tell me, you tell me,” Harvey chuckled. “I said I want to help and that’s what I’m doing. I may be an old man, but I’m not stupid, and I know what Montgomery Shackleton’s biggest weakness is. I know how to hit him right where it hurts.”

*****

“His son is his pride and joy,” Harvey Jenson explained over a cup of coffee at the café they met him in. They had filled him in on everything that had happened and now he was telling them his own personal plan that he had cooked up from the confines of the residential home before making his dramatic escape. “He wants to pass on his legacy to him when he retires, when he dies, and no doubt pass on the artefacts too.”

“So…how does this help us?” Thena asked impatiently.

“I told you that his son was his biggest weakness. He would do anything for him. He kidnapped your sister, didn’t he? Why not give him a taste of his own medicine?”

“You want to kidnap his son?” Dorian’s eyebrow shot up.

“It would work,” nodded Harvey. “He would definitely give you the artefacts back if you did that.”

“But...then that would make us no better than him,” Thena objected, shaking her head. “No…no, we can’t do that. We’re not kidnappers. We’re not criminals.”

“Hm, Thena’s right,” agreed Dorian with a sigh, frowning slightly as he tried to figure out a solution. “Surely…surely the threat would be enough. I mean…he knows you, right? He knows what you’re…well…what you’re capable of, for want of better words.”

“He most certainly does, yes,” said Harvey.

“Well then, if you
tell him
that you’ve kidnapped his son, he’ll believe you, simply because of your history together…the bitterness between you. If you make the call…he’ll be shocked, it will have come from nowhere; he thinks you’re still in the residential home, after all. And if you’re angry enough, if you really sell it to him, it might just work.”

“Then maybe we can get him to confess to some of the things he’s done,” Thena suggested, suddenly getting caught up in the idea. “We can record him, use it as evidence of his corruption and take it to the police.”

They all looked at each other silently. This might just work.

Thena took out her phone and, disguising the number, handed it across to Harvey. “His number’s still on there from when he kidnapped Deme.”

Harvey nodded and then hit the call button and raised the phone to his ear. A few rings later it was answered by an impatient sounding Montgomery Shackleton.

“Who’s this? What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Not too busy for me, Monty,” replied Harvey with a sneer.

There was a silence on the line.

“Don’t you recognise me, Monty?” Harvey continued. “Oh, I think you probably do…”

“I do,” Shackleton’s voice came over quiet, concerned.

“I have a little surprise for you. I think you’re going to love it.”

Thena and Dorian glanced at one another. Harvey was actually very good at this, which was perhaps not surprising considering his history as a hitman.

“I want that artfect, Monty,” said Harvey coolly, but the menace behind his words barley concealed. “And you’re going to give it to me. And do you know why?”

Silence.

“Because I have your son. And I will kill him, if you don’t.”

Another long silence.

“You know I’ll do it, Monty. You know me. I want that artefact. If you want to see your son again, you’ll meet me tonight in the park. The same place you met with the others when you kidnapped that poor girl. By the bench. Midnight.”