I started.
‘So who’s to say he’ll be the last?’
Victor guessed my concern, picked up the phone and called Hicks. Within twenty minutes an SO-14 squad had surrounded the funeral parlour where Smarts’s body had been released to his family. They were too late. The face that Smarts had been wearing for the past two years had been stolen. Security cameras, unsurprisingly, had seen nothing.
The news of Landen’s upcoming wedding had hit me pretty badly. I found out later that Daisy Mutlar was someone he met at a book signing over a year earlier. She was pretty and beguiling, apparently, but a bit overweight, I thought. She had no great mind either, or at least, that’s what I told myself. Landen had said he wanted a family and I guessed he deserved one. In coming to terms with this I had even begun reacting positively to Bowden’s sorry attempts to ask me out to dinner. We didn’t have much in common, except for an interest in who
‘Go on, then,’ I said, recalling our last conversation when we were having lunch together, ‘tell me about Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford.’
Bowden looked thoughtful for a moment.
‘The Earl of Oxford was a writer, we can be sure of that. Meres, a critic of the time, mentioned as much in his
‘Could he have written the plays?’ I asked.
‘He could have,’ replied Bowden. ‘The trouble is, Meres also goes on to list many of Shakespeare’s plays and credits Shakespeare with them. Sadly that places Oxford, like Derby and Bacon, into the front-man theory, according to which we have to believe that Will was just the beard for greater geniuses now hidden from history.’
‘Is that hard to believe?’
‘Perhaps not. The Red Queen used to believe four impossible things before breakfast and it didn’t seem to do her any harm. The front-man theory is
There was a pause. The authorship of the plays was something that a lot of people took very seriously, and many fine minds had spent lifetimes on the subject.
‘The theory goes that Oxford and a group of courtiers were employed by the court of Queen Elizabeth to produce plays in support of the government. In this there seems some truth.’
He opened a book and read from an underlined passage.
‘“A crew of courtly makers, noblemen and Gentlemen, who have written excellently well, as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest, of which number is first that noble Gentleman, the Earl of Oxford.”‘
He snapped the book shut.
‘Puttenham in 1598. Oxford was given an annual grant of a thousand pounds for just such a purpose, although whether this was for writing the plays or another quite different project it is impossible to tell. There is no
‘And he died in 1604,’ I said.
‘Yes, there is that. Front-man theories just don’t seem to work. If you think Shakespeare might have been a nobleman anxious to remain anonymous, I should forget it. If someone else
‘Kit Marlowe?’ I asked.
‘The same.’
There was a commotion on the other side of the office. Victor slammed down the phone and beckoned us over.
‘That was Schitt; Hades has been in touch. He wants us in Hicks’s office in half an hour.’
23. The drop
‘I was to make the drop. I’d never held a case containing Ј 10 million before. In fact, I wasn’t then and never have. Jack Schitt, in his arrogance, had assumed he would capture Hades long before he got to look at the money. What a sap. The Gainsborough’s paint was barely dry and the English Shakespeare Company weren’t playing ball. The only part of Acheron’s deal that had been honoured was the changing of the motorway services’ name. Kington St Michael was now Leigh Delamare.’
Braxton Hicks outlined the plan to us soon after—there was an hour to go until the drop. This was Jack Schitt’s way of ensuring that none of us tried to make our own plans. In every way this was a Goliath operation— myself, Bowden and Victor were only there to add credibility in case Hades was watching. The drop was at a redundant railway bridge; the only ways in were by two roads and the disused railway line, which was only passable in a four-by-four. Goliath men were to cover both roads and the railway track. They were ordered to let him in, but not out. It all seemed pretty straightforward—on paper.
The ride out to the disused railway line was uneventful, although the phoney Gainsborough took up more room in the Speedster than I had imagined. Schitt’s men were well hidden; Bowden and I didn’t see a single soul as we drove to the deserted spot.
The bridge was still in good condition, even though it had long since ceased to function. I parked the car a little way off and walked alone to the bridge. The day was fine, and there was barely a sound in the air. I looked over the parapet but couldn’t see anything remiss, just the large aggregate bed, slightly undulated where the sleepers had been pulled up all those years ago. Small shrubs grew among the stones, and next to the track was a deserted signal box from where I could just see the top half of a periscope watching me. I assumed it to be one of Schitt’s men and looked at my watch. It was time.
The muffled sound of a wireless beeping caught my attention. I cocked my head and tried to figure out where it was coming from.
‘I can hear a wireless beeping,’ I said into my walkie-talkie.
‘It’s not one of ours,’ responded Schitt from the control base in a deserted farmhouse a quarter of a mile away. ‘I suggest you find it.’
The wireless was wrapped in plastic and stashed in the branches of a tree on the other side of the road. It was Hades and it was a bad line—it sounded as though he was in a car somewhere.
‘Thursday?’
‘Here.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘How are you? I’m sorry I had to do what I did but you know how desperate we psychopaths get.’
‘Is my uncle okay?’
‘In the pink, dear girl. Enjoying himself tremendously; such an intellect, you know, but so
‘You can finish it now,’ I told him. Hades ignored me and carried on:
‘Don’t try anything heroic, Thursday. As you must have guessed, I have the
