Further cases of forgery, larceny and burglary were investigated by either Jonas Blackwood or Thomas Nightingale, or a combination of the two, as the years rolled on.
Aware that time was fast disappearing, Morton pushed through the documents at a speed which he found unsettling and unprofessional. It would be very easy to miss the kind of minor anomaly which was actually the very thing for which he was searching.
Without realising it, he had reached the case file to which the letter of 18th November 1821 had referred.
It had not been incorrectly dated at all; Jonas Blackwood had been employed by a private client on the 4th October 1821.
Morton read it, baffled.
Phil was sitting in Katie’s borrowed Astra, his head tipped back, fast asleep. He woke suddenly and with a sharp jolt. Recognition of where he was—in a quiet car park just outside New Romney—took several seconds. It took several more seconds to find his mobile, the cause of his having woken at all. Clara.
‘Yeah?’ he said.
‘Where are you, Phil?’ she asked. She had been crying, he could tell.
‘Just out,’ he answered.
‘The police have been here, again.’
‘Oh, right,’ he replied, not in the least bit surprised. He sniffed. ‘I’m going to hand myself in in the morning.’
‘Really?’ she said. He could not tell from her tone whether she thought that a good idea or not, or even whether she believed him. Did she really care if he was sent to prison? He wouldn’t be, though. He actually hadn’t stolen anything—just been trespassing, really. The most he’d get was some community service order.
‘Yeah, really,’ he confirmed. He was telling her the truth. In the morning he was going to return the Astra to Katie and make his way to Ashford Police Station.
‘So,’ Clara began, ‘what are you doing now?’
Phil rubbed his face and looked at the time. 6.22pm. ‘Waiting. Then bringing forward some money that’s coming our way.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Money, Clara, MONEY!’ he repeated. ‘We need money. We have no money.’
‘But what are you doing, exactly?’ she asked. ‘I don’t like the sound of it.’
‘Do you want the bailiffs turning up?’ he asked.
‘No, but…’
Phil sighed, terminated the call and switched the phone onto silent.
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes again, seeing a flash of the empty barrels, receiving another gut-wrenching kick of realisation that the gold—if it had ever existed—was now gone. Some greedy bastard had got there first. And to think he’d spent so much money on that metal detector. Well, that was going straight back to Amazon.
His thoughts began to slow down, as he thought of his new strategy. It did not take long for his contemplations to become stretched and torn, before plummeting into blackness.
It was just gone two-thirty in the morning when Phil climbed out of the car, pulled up his hood and began to jog along the deserted residential streets. He reached the bungalow in fewer than ten minutes. He slowed and changed his gait to one of casual confidence and walked up to the front door of Arthur Fothergill’s house. He pulled the key from his pocket, inserted it into the lock and silently pushed open the door.
In the hallway Phil stood, motionless.
The only sounds were a gentle clock ticking from the kitchen.
He moved a short way down the dark corridor. Arthur’s bedroom door was shut.
He pulled out his mobile, switched on the torch function and held it to the ceiling. The white beam struck what Phil was looking for: the smoke alarm. A small green LED light flashed rhythmically.
Reaching up, he pulled on a small white flap of plastic, which revealed the internal wiring. He tugged the rectangular battery from its cradle and pulled off the black cap which connected it to the alarm.
The green LED light slowly faded to nothing, as Phil pocketed the battery and closed the flap. Moving into the kitchen, Phil shone the phone around the worktop. He spotted the breadbin, and pulled it open to find a half-consumed loaf of wholemeal bread. He took out two slices and placed them under the grill. Then, he turned the grill up to maximum, sending a steadily growing orange glow into the room.
He glanced around him with a new sense of urgency.
Hanging from a rail beside the fridge were a tea-towel, hand-towel and oven glove. Phil grabbed all three, and placed them on the open door of the grill, before feeding the tea-towel gently in above the bread slices.
It took seconds for the tea-towel to blacken and then quickly catch light.
He watched the flames fanning out, reaching the oven glove and hand-towel.
Phil looked around him and noticed the apron on the back of the door. He pulled it down and placed it on the worktop above the grill, dangling the neck string around the kitchen roll holder.
He stood back, taking in all of the objects on the worktop, many of them highly combustible.
Hot flames were now ravaging the apron, stretching fiery probes sideways to the wooden cupboards which framed the oven.
The flames were now devouring the kitchen roll, seeming to utilise it as a ladder to reach the cupboards above.
There was no way, now, that this fire was going to go out of its own volition.
Chapter Thirty-Three
18th October 1826, Ramsgate, Kent
Jonas gazed out of the post-chaise, as they coursed along the rutted Kentish countryside. Darkness would come early tonight. A black veil, seemingly being pushed down from above, had left
