Page 100 of The Impossible Fortune
Though he won’t be sweating like Lord Townes is sweating right now.
The cage reaches the bottom of the shaft with the sort of reassuringly terrifying jolt a modern lift system just wouldn’t be able to replicate. Bill yanks open the door and leads Lord Townes out.
At the door to the vault, Bill scans his retina and his thumbprint, and a red light turns green. Lord Townes does the same and a second red light also changes. Bill grabs the metal arm of the door and opens it. This time he lets Lord Townes lead the way.
The vault is a rectangular room, no more than twelvefoot by eight, each wall covered floor to ceiling with individual safes, once silver and now a dull grey, each with a keypad set off to the left. Bill and Frank keep the place clean, but it is not a gleaming, sophisticated environment. It is a place of work.
Bill turns his back and lets Lord Townes go about his business. Safe 816, on the left wall. Bill hears a code being entered, a safe door flipping open and some sort of small box being taken out. He risks the quickest of glances – he knows he shouldn’t, but what if this is connected with Holly Lewis? He sees Lord Townes place a small wooden box in his bag. Couldn’t keep much in that.
The door shuts again, with a confident beep.
‘Ready,’ says Lord Townes.
‘Right you are,’ says Bill. Frank is always wondering what people keep in these safes – ‘All sorts in here, Billy, probably bring down governments’ – but Bill never gave it a thought. Too many people thinking too much was the key problem with the modern world. Think about your garden, sure, think about what you’re going to have for tea, think about some things you have some actual power over, but everybody spending all day thinking about things they couldn’t influence, where did that lead? Who knows and who cares what’s in those safes? No one has to know everything. Let people have their secrets.
Bill follows Lord Townes out of the vault and seals it shut once more. The cage is ready and waiting for them, and Bill escorts Lord Townes inside. This job was easier than hacking and hauling coal ten hours a day. Bill has had only two visitors all week. Lord Townes today, and DaveyNoakes came on Saturday. He should probably have told Ron about Davey, shouldn’t he? The rest of the time he has been working on his Fantasy Football team and listening to a podcast about Genghis Khan.
The cage starts to rise, with a whine that takes Bill all the way back to the seventies.
Lord Townes looks calmer now. Whatever he needed he has found. He’ll have his secrets, no doubt, and good luck to him. You keep them locked away, my old mate, none of my business.
‘I don’t suppose,’ says Lord Townes, finally relaxing, ‘I don’t suppose you watched the darts last night?’
Finally.
55
Joyce had got bored after breakfast, and decided to pop round to see Ibrahim. She’s very glad she did. There’s all sorts going on.
Kendrick is there. He has just been explaining how bombs work. He’d looked it up after Holly’s death, and is now something of an expert. He is also, and this is a first, wearing a dab of Ibrahim’s cologne.
Sitting opposite – and, Joyce suspects, the reason for the cologne – is a very charming young lady called Tia. Ibrahim is being fairly coy about what she is doing there, only that it is a favour. Perhaps the daughter of a client at the end of her tether. Either way Tia was full of questions about making bombs. In fact, most of her questions were about defusing bombs, which Joyce thought was very much to her credit. Some people spend their life planting bombs, and therefore everyone else has to spend their life defusing them. Elizabeth, she planted bombs. And Ron. And Joanna. Joyce defuses them. Cutting red wires and blue wires left, right and centre.
‘Joyce, you’re talking to yourself,’ says Kendrick.
‘Best way to get any sense,’ says Joyce. ‘Has Ibrahim got you searching for his code yet?’
‘What code?’ asks Kendrick, suddenly excited.
‘A bit too complicated for you, this one,’ says Ibrahim.
‘I like codes,’ says Tia. ‘Well, I like maths.’
Who on earth is this girl, Joyce wonders. ‘There’s a lot of money in a safe, and no one knows the code.’
‘Someone must know the code?’ says Tia.
‘Two people know half of it each,’ says Joyce. ‘But one of them is dead.’
‘And the other has disappeared,’ says Ibrahim.
‘The dead one is called Holly,’ says Kendrick.
‘Precisely,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I did tell your grandfather I wouldn’t speak to you about this.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Kendrick. ‘It was Joyce’s fault, and Grandad won’t be angry with Joyce.’
‘Who’s Holly?’ asks Tia.
