Miranda's Mount (2 page)

‘You what?’

‘I said get out of here but hurry up before I change my mind and don’t ever let me see you back here again.’

Over by the visitor centre on the quayside, Miranda spotted Ronnie Stapleton, the Mount’s head of security watching her through a pair of binoculars, radio poised in her other hand.

The girl wasted no more time, scuttled down the gangway to the boat, slumped into a corner and pulled her hoodie right over her head, just like a monk.

Miranda called to the boatman. ‘OK, Steve, that’s the last one.’

As she
headed back to the Mount’s security centre, she heard the boat chugging out of the tiny harbour on its way back to the mainland. She didn’t look back. Her head was filled with the image of another teenage girl, hiding in her bunk in a caravan, fifteen years before. She heard her mother shouting at her to ‘stop reading them bleedin’ books and get her arse out into the bleedin’ fresh air’ and her mother’s latest boyfriend screaming obscenities at the football and bawling at Miranda to fetch him another can of lager. She felt her tiny bunk room grow dark as she pulled the covers over her head and disappeared into her fantasy world of knights and battles and dragons.

A large and imposing figure waited by the door to the security centre, her arms crossed. Oh God. What would she tell Ronnie? She held up her palms.

‘Don’t say it. I’m a soft touch and I should be sacked.’

Ronnie
shook her head. ‘All of those things but I only have one question. Why?’

‘Because she seemed genuinely interested in the bestiary. Because she handed it back when I asked. Because she said she was sorry and … I guess I just wanted to give her a second chance.’

‘Do you know many chances she’s probably already had?’

‘I know you think I’m being soft.’

‘Soft? Nah. Stupidly naive and barking mad would be more accurate. If she’d got away with it, you do realise she’d probably have flogged it on eBay and bought a load of crack with it.’

‘I don’t think there’s much of a market on eBay for medieval bestiaries.’

Ronnie raised her eyebrows. ‘You’d be surprised. A mate of mine sold his soul on there last year. He got eighty quid for it.’ Ronnie tutted. ‘Well, it’s too late now. What really bothers me is how the hell she got hold of it?’

‘She says it was out of the cabinet which is possible but I don’t understand why we didn’t see her take it. Wasn’t one of the team monitoring the armoury CCTV system?’

‘I just checked the footage, the CCTV up in the library is on the blink again and we’ve had some problems with the cameras in the armoury and Great Hall,’ said Ronnie. ‘I sent you a memo about them a few days ago. You do know we need a new security system throughout the site?’

‘I do know but we can’t afford it. We’ll have to get the service engineers in this time and hope they can repair or replace the cameras. I’ll ask them to quote for a new system but I know we don’t have the cash. A couple of those Cambridge research students were working on the bestiary in the library this afternoon so I wonder if one of them left it out.’

‘They may claim to be the nation’s brightest but none of them has any common sense,’ said Ronnie with satisfaction. ‘I’ll call in all the students for a security seminar tomorrow and try to find out which of them did it.’

Miranda
winced inwardly, picturing the students blinking nervously under Ronnie’s interrogation. But she didn’t feel sorry for them; she was in enough trouble herself. Shit. She steeled herself to ask Ronnie a question she didn’t really want answered. ‘Will you have to report me for letting the girl go?’

Ronnie gave a long sigh and rubbed her chin. ‘We-lll. As the head of security, I should report you. As your best friend, I don’t want to. If you’ve got the book back, I could look the other way, but if I see her here again, I’ll call the police. Is the book damaged?’

‘I don’t think so.’ A small surge of panic rose again. She wished she’d kept the girl back now while she’d examined the bestiary properly, but the book wouldn’t stand too much handling without gloves. ‘I’ll put it back and ask the conservator to take a look tomorrow. If there are any problems, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Now, I’d better go and make sure nothing else is missing.’

‘Don’t worry, hun, I’m almost sure you haven’t just made the worst mistake of your life and ruined your career.’ Ronnie grinned reassuringly.

‘I hope not. I don’t think I could stand any more disasters today. Did you hear about the woman who wanted to exorcise the demons from the castle tower this morning? And the water was cut off to both ladies’ toilet blocks for a whole hour at lunchtime. I had to let the visitors use the staff changing rooms for a while.’

‘You love the drama, darling,’ said Ronnie and Miranda finally laughed.

‘I’ll take
the bestiary back to the library for now. Can you get the CCTV company over, please? Tell them it’s urgent.’

Ronnie saluted. ‘Aye, aye, cap’n. And by the way, I’ve booked some tickets to see the latest Hunger Games movie in Penzance for Saturday and reserved a table at the tapas bar next door. I’ll drive the Land Rover so you can have a sangria or four.’

Miranda heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Excellent. I need to get out of here, especially after a day like this.’

After carefully wrapping the bestiary in tissue paper from the filing cabinet in her office drawer, Miranda hauled herself up the steep pathways that led from the quay, with its cottages, café and visitor centre and offices, right to the castle itself.

Ronnie had been right; despite the scare with the book, she did love the drama that came with the job. She loved almost every aspect of her role, apart from not being able to beam herself up to the top of the castle, Star Trek style. A thousand years before, St Merryn’s Mount had been colonised by monks who’d chosen the islet a mile off the coast of Cornwall because it kept them away from the temptations of the wicked world. Since then, the isle had been occupied and the castle gradually developed by generations of St Merryns, the local Cornish aristocrats who still owned it today.

Miranda had done the climb up to the castle half a dozen times that day already and thousands of time during her years working on the Mount. Normally, she scooted up like a mountain goat but today, she felt, frankly, knackered. It was only May and meant to be low season but a pile of paperwork waited for her, teetering in the in-tray in her office. She’d hoped to start planning the Mount’s annual Festival of Fools and rejig the staff rota ready for the busier days ahead, yet she hadn’t sat down at her desk for more than ten minutes that day.

Still,
thanks to Ronnie, there was a night out to look forward to, when she could unwind and let her hair down.

She replaced the bestiary in its display case, locked the cabinet behind her and pocketed the key. As she suspected, it had still been in the lock. One of the students must have got distracted and left the bestiary out on the table with the other less valuable books. She hoped Ronnie’s pep talk would, frankly, scare the shit out of them and prevent any more lapses of memory.

She still couldn’t shake off her own misgivings at letting the girl go; but then again the urge to give her another chance had been so strong. Or maybe she was indulging herself; trying to turn back the clock, in some strange way, through the girl. But she didn’t want to put things right, she reasoned, she hadn’t done anything wrong in running away from home, so why did it suddenly feel as if she had? She’d never felt guilty before, not this guilty anyway … this was silly, she must be tired. She’d had a long busy day, and it wasn’t like her to brood.

After locking the door to the archive room, she decided to make a check on the other public rooms of the castle. As expected, all was quiet in the Great Hall, the panelled dining room and the corridors. The only sounds were her own echoing footsteps and the waves battering the rocks far below the castle walls.

Miranda
pushed open the door of the armoury, the final stop on her tour of the castle. With its centuries of weaponry, it was a favourite attraction, particularly with the fathers and boys. The fusty tang of the stone-walled room filled her nostrils. The suits of armour, chain mail and helmets lined its thick walls, all silent and empty.

But not all the visitors had gone. There was a man at the far end of the room. As the door clicked shut behind her, he turned round and looked at her. If she’d been nervous at confronting a teen thief, that now seemed like a walk in the park. Her heart thudded as loudly as the castle’s antiquated boiler system.

The man held a cutlass in his hand and it was pointed at her.

‘I’m
sorry, sir, but if you don’t put down that cutlass, I’m going to have to call Security.’ Miranda forced herself to speak calmly and clearly, as if addressing a group of schoolchildren on a tour of the Mount. Even in a highly stressful situation, especially in a highly stressful situation, it was best to be polite to the visitors, even if this one was brandishing a lethal weapon.

The man smiled. He didn’t look like a psychopath; in fact he looked startlingly handsome in a rakish way as if he’d just swung down from the crow’s nest of a galleon. His thick black hair was trying to escape from a ponytail and he had a tiny goatee beard and a thin gold hoop through his ear. His face was tanned and, while Miranda didn’t think he was much above thirty, he had the world-weary look of someone who’d seen and done, and possibly smoked or inhaled, a lot of stuff. Oh bloody hell, she hoped he wasn’t on something now.

‘And you are?’ he asked, lowering the cutlass and glaring at her as if she were the intruder, not him.

‘I’m the property manager, sir. The castle closed some time ago and,’ she added as goosebumps danced the flamenco along her bare arm, ‘I’m afraid we can’t allow visitors to handle the artefacts.’

Her
mouth was dry, her fingers were slick around the leather case of the radio but she was determined to stay calm. She’d opened the emergency channel to the island’s security team as soon as she’d entered the armoury and spotted him so she hoped Ronnie and her deputy could hear her. Sadly, because the CCTV camera wasn’t working, they couldn’t actually see her. This is where ignoring memos would come back to bite her on the bum, thought Miranda as she fought to stay calm. By her calculations, it would only take a few minutes for Ronnie and Reggie to run up the steps and into the armoury, less if one of them was nearby. That was time enough for her to have the situation under control.

The man gave the air an experimental slash.

She swallowed hard. It was also more than enough time for him to turn her into a doner kebab.

She spoke into the radio, battling to keep the tremor from her voice. ‘Hello, Ronnie? Can we have a mop and bucket in the armoury, please? There’s been a spillage.’

A smile spread over the man’s face. ‘A mop and bucket? I suppose that’s some kind of code for an incident? Well, there’s no need, I’m really not dangerous.’

He took a step forwards, still holding the sword. The arm that held the cutlass was lean but muscular, his shoulders broad and strong. He definitely looked like a man who could handle himself in a skirmish and he was definitely in full control of his faculties. Maybe that ‘been there, done that, killed it’ look was because he’d been in the Forces or a mercenary. Miranda took two paces back on legs that had turned very wobbly. She prayed that her mop and bucket alert would have the security team racing to her rescue. ‘Sir, please calm down.’

‘I am calm. I’m only messing about. Have at ye, varlet. Or some shit like that.’ He slashed a ‘Z’ in the air.

‘I think you’ll find that was Zorro and that he used a rapier. You’re holding a cutlass. A very rare cutlass.’

‘Really?’ He ran a finger over the tip of the sword. ‘Ow! Bugger, it’s still sharp.’

She scooted backwards, her back now scraping the stone wall. ‘Just put down the sword. My team’s on its way and I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.’

‘OK, OK. Miss Whiplash.’

He laid down the cutlass on a wooden trestle and Miranda exhaled discreetly as tension ebbed from her body. Thank goodness for that, he was probably just a bit of a prat rather than a serial killer. She hadn’t really thought he was dangerous or a thief, not that he’d have got very far with the cutlass unless he planned on swimming.

He
raised his palms and smiled. ‘You got me bang to rights, guv’nor.’

‘This isn’t funny you know,’ said Miranda, torn between relief at his relinquishing the sword and annoyance at his cheek. He stared at her for a moment then gave a shrug and a sigh, as if he’d suddenly become bored with the game. ‘No. You’re right. This isn’t funny at all but it is abso-fucking-lutely farcical. It is, in fact, the biggest joke on the planet that I’m even here now … Christ on a bike!’

Miranda let out a tiny squeal as a small studded door behind him flew back on its hinges. In seconds, two burly figures had burst in and pinned the man to the flagstones.

‘Get
off me, you idiots!’

Oh you shouldn’t have said that, thought Miranda. You really shouldn’t have said it, not to Reggie, and especially not to Ronnie.

There was a low growl in Ronnie’s throat as she sat astride his legs. ‘Shut up, tosser.’

Reggie was more polite. ‘Now, sir, don’t struggle. We don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, twisting the man’s arms behind his back.

‘Miss Whiplash over there said that. Now, look what’s happened. Fuck it! You’re breaking my bloody arm!’

‘We advise you to calm down, sir, or we’ll have to take further action that you might find uncomfortable.’ Ronnie sounded like a Bond villainess before she pulls the lever that plunges her victim into the shark tank. ‘Are you all right, Miranda?’

Realising she’d backed into a corner, Miranda stood up straight and brushed dust from the back of her shorts with shaky hands. ‘Yes thanks, I’m fine.’

‘Hey, there’s no need to tie my hands. Ooof.’

Miranda winced as Ronnie pressed the man’s face into the flagstones while Reggie secured his wrists with cable tie. Ronnie had been a prison officer at Holloway and Reggie was ex-SAS and Miranda worried momentarily that the intruder might sue them for assault but then, as he uttered a stream of curses into the floor, she decided she didn’t care.