“And what would you gentlemen be up to, then?” Laker asked, taking a cigarette from behind his ear and lighting it.
“Landscape gardening,” Tod told him. “Mostly big estates. Places that have a problem, we get called in all over the country.”
“You’re Irish lads?”
“That’s it,” Kelly said. “Always on the go in our line of work. Never in one place more than a few weeks. It’s hard graft.”
“And it gives you an appetite,” Tod intervened. “There’s a pub around here, I believe.”
“There certainly is, and the food’s good. I’ll show you the way.”
Tod opened one of the bags and there was a clunk as he took out two bottles of Scotch and put them on the side. The old man licked his lips.
“You’re well supplied, I’ll give you that.”
“I don’t like to run out, and that’s a fact.” Kelly smiled. “But let’s go over to the pub now and get something to eat. Maybe you’d join us?”
“Be glad to,” Laker said and led the way out.
The three of them had shepherd’s pie, the Scotch whiskey flowed and the old man loved it.
Tod said, “Funny place this. Dermot’s nephew was telling us about the big house.”
“Huntley Hall? I know all about that.”
“Yes, so he told us.”
“And what he knew was what he’d heard from you,” Kelly said. “He passed it on the way in. Huntley Hall Institution. They’ve certainly got some security there. I mean, some of the big country estates we’ve worked on have got walls like that, but that electronic fence on top is something else again.”
Tod slipped off to the bar and got three more large whiskeys. He brought them back and pushed one over to Laker, who took it with alacrity.
“Ah, it’s special, see. They have to have that kind of security, cameras and so forth, to keep people in. They’re all head cases, that’s the story. It’s not like it was in Lord Faversham’s day. I was telling your nephew, a poacher’s paradise that estate were.”
Tod eased another whiskey over to him. “Not any longer. Not if there’s no way of getting in now. You certainly can’t climb that fence!”
“Oh, I don’t know. There’s ways and there’s ways. You don’t always need to go over a fence.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Tod said. “You could go under, I suppose.”
“Now, I never said that, never did,” Laker said, and accepted another whiskey that was pushed his way.
“No, I don’t believe it,” Kelly said. “There’s no way you could get in a place like that.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure.” Laker was already drunk and a little belligerent.
Tod said, “It doesn’t sound likely to me, I admit. In fact, I’d bet on it.”
The hook was there, and Laker took it. “You put your money where your mouth is and I’ll bloody well show you.”
“All right.” Kelly took out his wallet and produced two fifty-pound notes. “There you go. A hundred quid says you’re making it up.”
Laker’s eyes gleamed and he reached for the money, but Kelly snatched his hand away. “Oh, no, you prove me wrong if you want this.”
“I bloody well will.” Laker reached for the remaining whiskey and swallowed it down. He got up. “Come on, then. I’ll show you whether I’m lying or not,” and he made for the door.
He led the way along the road out of the village, no more than five minutes’ walk, then turned into a track leading through heavy woodland. It was very quiet, only the birds making noise, lifting off and calling to each other.
In spite of the drink taken, Laker was surprisingly steady on his feet. “This is Witch Wood. Don’t ask me why, but so it’s been called that since time long gone. If you could see through the trees, maybe fifty yards to the left is the main road, and the Huntley Hall estate on the other side.”
“So what are we talking about here?” Tod asked as they walked along the track.
“Round about eighteen hundred, Lord Ashley Faversham made a fortune in the sugar trade in Barbados, then came home to refurbish the family estate. But there was a problem. There used to be a river on the far side of the woods and it would overflow. It doesn’t exist now. It was diverted a long time ago to provide water for a canal project. But when it was there, and there was water seepage into the estate, Faversham had a series of tunnels built to run it off.”
“And?”
“And when the river was diverted, they had the tunnels closed off.”
Tod could already see the way this was going. He took out his cigarettes and gave Laker one. “Except one of them was overlooked, wasn’t it?”
Lake almost choked on his cigarette. “How did you know that?”
“Oh, I’ve got that kind of mind,” Tod said. “Just show me where it is.”
They plowed on, and Kelly said, “How long have you known about this?”
“Since I were a lad,” Laker said. “My dad told me. It were a secret in the family, and still is.”
“Good man, yourself,” Tod said. “Now let’s be seeing it.”
A few minutes later, Laker turned left off the track, pushed into a thicket, paused, bent down, fumbled in the grass, found a handle and lifted an iron grille. The hole was quite wide. “I’ll lead the way,” he said, and started down an iron ladder.
Below, it was damp, no more than that, with headroom to five feet. As Tod followed him, Kelly behind, Laker took a flashlight from his pocket. “Follow me.”
He took off, and after a while, rays of light drifted through from above. “Airholes,” he said. “That means we’re under the road and into the gardens.”
A few minutes later, they came to the end and another iron ladder gave way to another iron grille. He mounted first and pushed the grille back, and they followed and found themselves in a copse of dense foliage. The house was clearly visible through the trees.
“You’ve got security lighting mounted on the house over the terrace. There’s a camera on the left and another on the right. More stuff like that on the drive. The real problem is the wall. Even if you got over it, there’s an electronic beam five foot inside. It
“Except for a tunnel that they never knew about,” Tod said.
“Exactly.”
They moved forward, paused behind a couple of statues and looked across at the terrace. Just then, the French windows opened and Selim walked out, Ferguson behind him.
Kelly said, “Christ, it’s them.”
At the same moment, it started to rain and Laker said, “Right, let’s get out of here,” and he turned and started back to the access grille to the tunnel.
Kelly grabbed at Tod’s arm as they went after him. “You saw who that was?”
“Of course I did.”
“Christ, Tod, if we’d had a gun between us, it would have been so simple. Not only Selim, but Ferguson as well.”
“And simple is what it will be,” Tod said. “We’ll be back, Kelly, ould son, never you fear,” and they went after the old man.
When they surfaced at the entrance, Laker was in high spirits. “Did I tell you or did I tell you?” he chorused as they went back through Witch Wood. “That’s a hundred quid for me.”
“You’re right, old son,” Kelly told him. “I was wrong and you were right. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”
They reached the trailer site, and Tod said, “You owe the man a hundred quid, Dermot, so get it out and we’ll have a drink on it.”
He led the way into their trailer, got one of the bottles of Scotch open and found three glasses. Kelly gave the
