‘Bloody nerve. Who the hell do they think they are?’
‘They’re the ones who understand,’ said James. ‘They’re the ones who know what to do. What must be done.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘They’re very good at giving orders. Just burn that house down, James. You could get ten years in prison for that. But we’ll come and watch, James. It’s just that we don’t want to get our own hands dirty.’
‘You don’t understand, Mr Morgan. I know it’s been bad for you, but if that thing broke out of the binding prayer the monks must have put on it . . .’
‘How do they know the monks put a binding prayer on it?’
James looked at me long. ‘I’ll only ask you one thing, Mr Morgan. Would you ever set foot in that house again?’
I collapsed like a house of cards.
‘But as to how I do it,’ said James grimly. ‘Just a fire won’t do, you see. Not ordinary fire . . . they’d just redevelop the site and it could start all over again. And if the excavations loosen the binding prayer . . . then . . .’
Hermione stirred in the corner. She said, almost dreamily, ‘You would need something like the Greek fire the Byzantines used. Something that would creep and drip and cling and go on burning . . .’
I said, ‘You mean like napalm? How the hell would we get napalm? Ring up the USAF at Mildenhall and ask them if they’ve got any second-hand napalm going cheap?’
‘The stuff they made Greek fire with is quite common – still in industrial use. Burning pitch . . . phosphorous . . .’
‘How do we get that?’ asked James.
‘Mossy might have contacts . . .’ said Hermione.
‘And who’s going to pay Mossy?’
‘Stop being so trivial and childish, Morgan . . .’
‘And how do we get it inside? It’s not going to just sit there and let us . . .’
‘We’ll just have to work it out, Morgan. Won’t we?’
‘Tomorrow night,’ said Mossy down the phone. ‘I’m sorry, but my bloke says it’ll be ten thousand quid, Mr Morgan. Five thousand for the Landrover – the number-plates will slip off easily, and the engine and chassis numbers will be filed off. It won’t be traceable. And he’s shown me how to use the electronic timer. The Semtex cost a bit – it’s getting very dodgy, Semtex, thanks to our friends across the Irish Sea.’
‘Ten thousand quid?’ I squealed.
‘That’s delivered to the site at a time of your choice. He’s taking the risks. And he wants cash – tens and twenties, used notes. Right?’
‘Right,’ I said wearily. Anything to get out of this hideous fairyland. Anything to get back to bodging up antiques and cheating the good old British public again.
Chapter 14
Why did everything go wrong that night? Was it just that we hadn’t planned properly, hadn’t reconnoitred thoroughly enough, not wanting to go near the place till it was time? Or was the creature reaching out to us, through the very flecks of mud engrained in our skin?
We crept into that accursed garden in good enough time; too early, perhaps, through nervousness: having left the cars parked not too far away for a quick get-away. Hermione, me, Mossy, James. We crept round the back of the house, and shone discreet torches on the great French window that was the only possible way in. It was as we remembered it: plenty of space to admit a Landrover, provided it smashed its way in through two slender carved columns of stone that looked like the grey leg-bones of a giant.
But we had forgotten the steep two-foot step leading up to the window. Which even a Landrover in bottom gear might find impossible to climb.
We stood, utterly dismayed, until Mossy said. ‘We’ll have to build a ramp.’
‘With what?’ My heart was in my boots.
His torch flicked round. ‘Plenty of stones in the old rockery. Branches. And the suitcases in the outhouse. Some of them look solid enough.’
So we slaved, sweated in the warm night. The suitcases, pulled into the open air, looked like the pathetic possessions that doomed Jews left, at the entrances to the death-camps. But I felt a certain grim irony in the fact that the dead too were having their revenge.
We finished the ramp at five to midnight. Stood back and waited.
‘Here he comes,’ said Mossy. Far off, up Belvoir Road, the rattle of the Landrover’s old diesel engine rose clear of the sound of