Lies, Damned Lies, and History(41)

We divided the wall between us and began, as quietly as we could, to scan the labels. Being Thirsk, of course, they hadn’t made it easy. Many of the labels were handwritten and had faded over time. I began to fret again.

I needn’t have bothered. Peterson found it almost immediately. Lying in a specially constructed case, there it was.

This was really going well.

I crossed the room to look over his shoulder. The sword seemed – diminished – somehow. Pitted. Rusted. Old. Somehow sad. I remembered the images the Chancellor had sent me. How could it deteriorate in such a short time?

‘Brilliant, Tim,’ I said. Stepping aside, I opened my com. ‘Roberts, Sands. We’ve found it. We just have to get it out now. Keep your coms open and be ready to move quickly.’

‘This is encouraging,’ said Markham, doing the finger-flexing thing again. ‘I can’t see any sort of security tags. I should just be able to lift it out. We’ll leave the case. I know it’s probably sacrilege, but I’m going to shove it down my trouser leg and we’ll just walk out. We’ll tell anyone who asks that we’re going for lunch and just never come back. And it’s Friday – we might have the whole weekend before anyone realises it’s gone. They might not even connect the theft with us. I rather think we might get away with this after all, don’t you?’

Gently, he reached out to touch the sword and with an ear-splitting shriek, every alarm in North Yorkshire went off.

‘Bollocks,’ said Peterson. ‘No time for finesse,’ and he yanked out the sword and handed it to Markham who pushed us out through the door. We didn’t bother with the corridor, heading straight for the fire door, which Peterson kicked open. We raced down another hot, dry, dusty, dead fly-filled corridor lit only by a dingy skylight, burst through another fire door at the other end and erupted out into some sort of loading area.

We paused to get our bearings and make ourselves look respectable.

Both Sands and Roberts were jabbering away in my ear. In stereo.

‘It’s all gone tits up,’ I said. ‘Mr Roberts, please make your way back to the car. Standard procedures.’

By which I meant, don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t catch anyone’s eye. Don’t keep looking over your shoulder. Most importantly – don’t run.

‘This way,’ said Peterson. In the role of concerned colleague, he took my arm, presumably in case being pregnant had caused me to lose all sense of direction. Which, of course, implied I had one in the first place.

‘Just a word of warning,’ I said. ‘If the going gets tough I intend to faint. Watch out I don’t drag you down as well.’

We made our way slowly around the side of the building, back towards the car park.

Roberts said, ‘I’m being evacuated out of the building. I’ve told them you’d gone for lunch. No one’s looking for you.’

Yet.

‘I’m nearly at the car,’ he said. ‘I can see Sands.’

Markham said, ‘When you get there, stay there. No matter what you see or hear.’

‘Copy that. Did you get it?’

‘Course we did,’ he said, cheerfully, ignoring the screeching alarms, the running people spilling out through the gates, the confusion, the chaos …

I was familiar with this procedure. The alarms go off. People know it’s only a fire drill or a bomb scare or something. Section heads have to cattle prod everyone out of the door because they’re all shouting, ‘I’ll just finish this spreadsheet.’ Or ‘Are you kidding, I’ve waited all morning for access to this database,’ or ‘Wait, I need to go back for my shopping/handbag/shoes/whatever.’ No one knows what’s going on. The fire marshal is tearing her hair out trying to get everyone to congregate at the official assembly point AWAY from the building, people! The security people are trying to get in to see why the alarms have gone off. The fire brigade turns up, fruitlessly looking for someone who knows what’s happening. Librarians have stopped to gather important documents. Members of the public try to drift away, not realising they need to be accounted for and the whole thing is just chaos.

We’re St Mary’s. We can do chaos.

We slipped quietly through the milling crowds, through the ornate gates and into the car park. We walked very slowly, stopping every now and then to have a good gawk at what was happening, because that was what everyone else was doing.

A car pulled up beside us and I very nearly had a heart attack, but it was Sands. Very pale, but quite calm. Roberts was with him. We climbed in, Markham very carefully not impaling his important bits on an even more important historical relic.