‘And all the time he was talking to me about planning requirements, he must have known I was just doing it to keep him talking, and he was quite happy because it was all on my phone bill!’ Robert scowled as he took another sip of wine. ‘He must have been laughing up his sleeve at me!’
‘He won’t be laughing when he and his friends realise that we’ve got the book.’ Michelle smiled. She looked at Jake. ‘Is it safe?’
‘Very safe,’ Jake reassured her.
He felt elated. They’d found one of the books! Once they got back to London, Michelle would talk to her editor and show him the film she’d taken on her camera, and then the process could start rolling about putting the hidden library of Malichea right into the eye of the public. No more secrets, no more mysteries kept hidden, just open transparency. The truth would be out there, and Lauren could come home. Maybe not immediately, but soon.
‘My room’s been turned over!’
The three turned to see Andy, standing with Woody beside him on his lead. Andy looked furious.
‘What?’ asked Michelle.
‘I’ve just been up to my room to put Woody in after our walk, and my room’s been ransacked,’ said Andy. ‘Someone’s gone through everything. My stuff’s all over the floor.’
Robert and Michelle turned to look at Jake, shocked, and then they all headed upstairs to their rooms.
They found them in the same state as Andy’s: in the room that Jake and Robert shared, their suitcases had been opened and then left lying upside down on the floor, with their clothes strewn around. It was the same in Michelle’s room: her overnight bag open and dumped, and her clothes thrown on to the floor.
And none of the locks of the doors have been damaged, noticed Jake. So either someone had picked the locks, or it had been done by someone using a pass-key. If it was a pass-key, then Jake guessed it could have been the two men they’d encountered with the shotgun, the Watchers. If the locks had been picked, then they were up against someone much more dangerous.
‘They were looking for the book,’ said Michelle. ‘Those two must have dug into the hole after we’d gone and discovered it wasn’t there, and they came looking for it.’
‘Or it was someone else,’ muttered Jake.
‘What?’ asked Michelle.
‘Who?’ demanded Andy.
‘There have been other people trying to find it,’ said Jake. ‘Before we came down here. They tried to stop us.’
‘They slashed Lizzie’s tyres!’ growled Robert, still angry at the memory.
Andy looked puzzled.
‘You mean that those two blokes were in London?’ he said, baffled.
‘No,’ said Jake. ‘These were other people.’
Andy let out a low whistle.
‘Like I said, this must really be some special book!’ he said.
‘I’m not happy about staying here tonight,’ announced Jake.
‘Why?’ asked Michelle. ‘If it was those two gaffers we met who did this, they didn’t seem particularly harmful. OK, they tried to threaten us with a gun, but it wasn’t loaded, and when Andy did that thing with his ID card, they backed down.’
‘But say it wasn’t them?’ said Jake. ‘Say someone followed us down from London. The people who slashed Robert’s tyres.’ And who stuck that picture of Lauren on my wall with a knife, thought Jake miserably. ‘Trust me, not everyone who’s after the books is harmless. And if we stay here, who knows what they might do tonight to get hold of the book.’ He gestured at the mess in the rooms. ‘This is nothing. I’ve seen what these people can do.’ And, with a shudder, he remembered finding the body of the ex-SAS soldier in his flat, stabbed to death.
‘Well, I can’t leave,’ said Robert. ‘I’ve had enough wine to stop me driving tonight.’
‘And there’s no way I’m taking a chance of driving anywhere and losing my licence,’ put in Michelle.
Jake sighed. If he stayed here tonight he was in danger, and he knew it.
‘Maybe there’s a train back to London?’ suggested Robert.
Michelle shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I checked it out before I came down here, just in case I could do it by train. There’s no station at Glastonbury, and I think you’ll have missed the last train from the nearest place.’ She checked her watch, and nodded. ‘Yes. No last train for you.’ She shrugged. ‘Looks like you’re here till the morning.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Andy. They looked at him, and he gave them all a rueful grin. ‘This is where the non-drinker always suffers. A weekend party, a match, an outing, guess who gets to be the designated driver.’ He looked at Jake and asked: ‘How serious is it? This threat you’re talking about?’