Newton’s Fire (10 page)

‘It’s happening, then,’ said Danel. Half statement, half question.

‘Bring everyone you can trust,’ Avram told him. ‘Netanya, tomorrow afternoon. Same place, same time.’

‘It is,’ said Danel. ‘It’s really happening.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.’ He finished the call, walked briskly to another bank of phones. ‘I need the truck,’ he said, when Ephraim answered.

‘When?’

‘This afternoon. Tonight.’

‘I sold the last one,’ said Ephraim. ‘I’ve got a new one. It’s dark blue and a little bigger. But shabby. I was going to repaint it this week.’

‘Shabby is fine. As long as it runs.’

‘It runs beautifully. I’ll leave it for you now.’

Avram moved on again for his third call. An abrasively cheerful young American woman answered. When he asked for Francis, she told him to hold, then went away singing a spiritual. Her voice faded and the minutes passed, so that Avram began to fear he’d been cut off. But then suddenly a man came on. ‘This is Francis. Who are you?’

‘You know who.’

‘Oh.’ Silence stretched out. ‘What do you want?’

Avram lowered his voice, less from the fear of being overheard than from shame. ‘I need a cow,’ he said.

‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Francis.

‘I need her by seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

Francis laughed. ‘That’s not possible. You know it isn’t. Not perfect. Not three years old.’

‘You told me once that you didn’t believe the nine previous heifers could all have been perfect reds. You told me once that if we couldn’t breed even one, despite our huge herds, our varieties of cattle and our modern genetic techniques, then it defied credibility that the ancients had found even one truly perfect one, let alone
nine
. You did tell me that, didn’t you?’

‘And I believe it.’

‘I believe it too.’ He took a deep breath before diving headlong into the heresy. ‘I think that many things claimed as absolute in the Tanakh were in fact not absolute. I think too many of my brethren use literalism to show off how devout they are. That is not how one honours the Lord, praise His Name. That is the way one defies Him.’

A beat of silence, then: ‘Tomorrow morning?’

‘Seven o’clock. As good as you’ve got. And at least three years old. We can honour that much. And her documentation will have to be convincing. My companions will want to check. Oh, and make it seem like she turned three at the precise hour of the earthquake.’

‘You’re asking too much. There isn’t time.’

‘And we’ll need the whole place to ourselves. You should be there, to answer questions. But not your volunteers. They’ll only say something stupid.’

‘You’re not
listening
. There isn’t time.’

‘No,’ said Avram. ‘
You’re
the one not listening. Call America if you need authority. Thaddeus will explain. But this
has
to happen. This is
going
to happen. Seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Be ready.’ And he put the phone down before Francis could argue further.

Rachel was too groggy to do anything but stand there dumbly as the BMW rushed towards her. But the men were quicker, leaping out of its way. It swerved at the last moment, pulled up with a screech beside her. The passenger door flew open and an athletic-looking, dark-headed young man grabbed her wrist, pulled her sideways onto his lap, her legs still dangling out. Blond-hair lunged for her, but the driver stamped on the accelerator and the BMW surged away, acceleration banging the door against her shins. They reached the junction with the main road and passing traffic forced the driver to hit his brakes. The door flew open again, allowing her to bring her feet fully inside so that the passenger could close the door. She looked around. The three men were chasing hard, fury in their eyes. They were almost upon them when a barely-existent gap opened in the traffic and the driver squirted out into it, forcing oncoming cars to brake sharply, leaving them honking like indignant geese.

‘Who the hell
are
you people?’ asked Rachel, still in the passenger’s lap. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Those men back there,’ said the passenger. ‘Was that a policeman with them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fuck!’ he said.

The driver grimaced. ‘You reckon they got my licence?’

‘Don’t know, mate,’ said his passenger. ‘Probably. Can they trace it?’

The driver shook his head. ‘Won’t be easy. The company rented it for me.’

‘Hey!’ Rachel had to shout for attention. ‘Who
are
you people? What’s going on?’

The passenger grimaced, uncertain how to answer. He offered her his hand to shake, which was somewhat awkward with her still in his lap. ‘My name’s Luke Hayward,’ he said. ‘I knew your—’

‘Luke Hayward?’ she said. She pushed away from him in horror, spilling over onto the back seats. ‘You killed my aunt.’

‘No,’ he said, turning around to face her, holding his palms up to diminish any threat she might feel. ‘That’s not true. I swear it’s not true. It was those men back there. That man with the fair hair.’

‘They were police. You’re saying the police killed Aunt Penny?’

‘They weren’t police,’ he insisted. ‘They were
with
a policeman. It’s not the same thing.’

‘He was on duty. He said his orders came down from on high.’

‘They tasered you in the back,’ said Luke. ‘Are you really going to take the word of men who’d taser you in the back over the people who saved you from them?’

She sought for a good comeback, couldn’t find one. ‘What the
hell’s
going on?’ she asked weakly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Luke. ‘Not everything, anyway. But those men were at your aunt’s house earlier. They found out that she’d sent you an email she wasn’t supposed to send, and that fair-haired guy lost his rag. She was trying to get away from him when she fell down the attic stairs.’

‘You were there? You saw it happen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why not report it?’

‘I tried.’

He launched into an extraordinary story about rooftop escapes, a phone call from a local pub, swarms of police. She listened in mounting horror. Fifteen minutes ago, she wouldn’t have believed a word of it. But now she did, she believed him completely. ‘This email my aunt sent,’ she said. ‘That man was talking about it too. He wanted me to forward it to him.’

He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. I’ll bet he just wanted to delete it.’

‘Why? What is it?’

‘This is going to sound crazy,’ he told her.

‘Crazier than everything else?’

‘Okay. It’s photographs of some old papers that your aunt wanted valued.’ He must have read bewilderment on her face, for he went on: ‘They’re valuable, don’t get me wrong. They were written by Sir Isaac Newton. Your aunt’s great-uncle bought them at Sotheby’s back in the 1930s. His name was Bernard Martyn. He was a physicist who worked for—’

‘Great-uncle Bernie,’ nodded Rachel. ‘Mum used to talk about him.’

‘I’m a Newton scholar,’ said Luke. ‘Those guys hired me to find his missing papers. I tracked your great-uncle’s lot to your aunt’s attic. I took pictures and emailed them off because my client had first refusal. Your aunt was happy with that. But she didn’t know what a good price would be.’

Rachel felt hollow. ‘So she emailed the pictures to me?’

Luke nodded. ‘I think she reckoned you could have them valued for her somehow. But then those guys showed up.’

‘Who are they? Who’s this client of yours?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you were working for them.’

‘They never told me their names. They never told me anything.’

‘And you didn’t think that
odd
?’ said Rachel. ‘You didn’t think that
suspicious
?’

‘These are the lost papers of Isaac bloody Newton we’re talking about, not nuclear fucking secrets. I just assumed it was some cranky old collector. How could I know this would happen?’

‘My Aunt Penny’s dead,’ said Rachel furiously. ‘She’s dead because you led those men to her.’

Luke blinked as though she’d slapped him. He was about to defend himself but then thought better of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. If I’d had the first idea …’

The driver glanced around, spoke into the silence. ‘Listen, love, I’m sorry too, and all that, but we weren’t the ones who killed your aunt or zapped you with that taser. This email is the only evidence there is of what really happened this afternoon. If they can delete it somehow, they’ll get away with this and maybe even put my mate here in the slammer for the rest of his life for something
they
did. Is that what you want?’

‘Why should I trust you any more than them?’

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his mobile, tossed it to her. ‘I got your address from a woman called Sonia, forget her surname, but she teaches law at Caius. She’s mates with a friend of mine called Miriam. Call Sonia. She’ll vouch for Miriam. Then call Miriam. She’ll vouch for me.’

‘And what’s
your
name?’

‘Redfern. Pelham Redfern.’

A bell tinkled faintly in Rachel’s memory. ‘I know that name,’ she said. ‘You’re the bastard who went out with Vicky Andrews.’

‘Ah,’ said Pelham. He scratched his throat uncomfortably. ‘Yes. Vicky. We did see each other for a—’

‘You broke her heart.’

‘Yes, well, sadly not every romance is destined to end in confetti and—’

‘She found you in bed with her sister.’

‘Oh, for god’s sake, mate,’ said Luke. ‘You bedded her sister?’

‘More accurate to say that she bedded me,’ shrugged Pelham. ‘Some serious sibling rivalry issues there, if you ask me, with muggins here caught in the middle. And somehow
I’m
the bad guy?’

Luke turned helplessly back to Rachel. ‘Okay, fine,’ he said. ‘Maybe you
can’t
trust us. Not like that. But we’re not conmen or villains or anything like that, I swear we’re not. We’re people like you. Our friends are your friends.’

Rachel hesitated. She wanted to be angry with him, she wanted to be suspicious, but there was something about him that she instinctively trusted, and it would have been dishonest to deny it. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s say I believe you. What now?’

Walters had been so intent on catching the BMW that he’d neglected to memorize its licence number. ‘The plates,’ he said, whirling around on Pete and Kieran. ‘Tell me you got their plates.’

‘I did,’ said Pete, jotting the number down before he could forget it.

‘That was him in the passenger seat,’ muttered Kieran. ‘The one from the old bat’s house.’

‘I know.’ Walters clenched a fist. He’d thought he’d been so smart setting that fire. He’d taken it for granted that the police would have nabbed Luke by now, would be scoffing at his story, preparing charges of manslaughter and arson. Instead, he now had the girl and the driver as witnesses for his defence; and even their tame policeman had become a liability, a thread that could be followed back through his boss, first to Croke and then to them. Walters looked at him. He was standing open-mouthed in the road, radio in hand, evidently wanting to call it in but not knowing what to say. Walters marched over to him, clapped him on his arm. ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘If you still want to join us, I’ll put in a word for you.’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman uncertainly. ‘Thanks.’

‘And keep all this to yourself, right? National security. Above even your boss’s clearance. Can’t say any more. Not until you join us.’ He flashed him a smile, strode to the SUV. They all piled in and pulled away, leaving the policeman still standing there dumbly, doing his best mannequin yet.

‘What now, boss?’ asked Pete.

‘We find that BMW and get rid of that fucking email.’ He turned to Kieran. ‘How much of her password did you get?’

‘First six characters. Should be enough to break the rest.’ He set a programme running, turned to Pete. ‘Give us their licence number, then.’ He tapped it in, ran a search. ‘It’s a rental,’ he announced, thirty seconds later. ‘Company called Jonson’s Cars.’

‘Where are they?’ asked Walters.

‘Head office is St Albans,’ said Kieran, checking his screen. ‘But they’ve got a dealership here in Cambridge.’

‘Open Sundays?’

‘For another hour.’

‘Then give me their address. Let’s pay them a visit.’

‘What now?’ asked Pelham rhetorically. ‘What do you mean, what now? You check for your aunt’s damned email.’

Rachel nodded. She logged in on his phone and there it was.

‘My dearest Rachel,

The most extraordinary thing – some Isaac Newton papers have just been unearthed in my attic! It seems your Great-great uncle Bernard bought them at Sotheby’s for next to nothing, and now they’re worth a small fortune! And we always thought him the unworldly one! Anyway, I thought of you and your brother at once. Bernie doted on your mother, though she wasn’t much more than a girl when he died. I’m sure he’d have wanted to help.

Now this is all supposed to be terribly hush-hush,
but apparently some terrifically wealthy collector is about make me an offer. Naturally I haven
’
t the first idea what the papers might be worth, and the nice young man who found them will only say they should fetch £20,000 or more. That would be wonderful, of course, and I
think
I can trust him, but he is here on behalf of this collector, after all, and I’d never forgive myself if I let myself be duped, not after that wretched episode with the barn roof! Anyway, to cut a long story short, I thought perhaps you or one of your colleagues might have some idea, so I’ve attached the photographs. Incidentally, not a word to anyone, especially not my brood. They don’t know of this yet, so we’ll be able to put the proceeds towards your brother’s care, and no one will ever be the wiser. I’m sure that’s what Bernie would have wanted. How does that sound?