Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us Read online

  Well, you’d know, Tye thought, but kept her thoughts to herself as usual.

  ‘So Jonah can look after himself? That’s good,’ said Coldhardt. ‘But he needs proper training in self-defence. See to it, Tye.’

  She nodded. A chequered flag had appeared on the sat-nav, warning them their destination was close by. Tye caught a blur of warm and welcoming light through the dark trees, some way off. ‘This is the place?’

  ‘Yes. The Gallery Rimbaud.’

  ‘What’s going on tonight?’

  ‘A charity soirée for the great and good of the art world, in celebration of the gallery’s guest of honour – the beneficent Raul Demnos.’

  Con looked at Tye. ‘That means he does things for charity.’

  ‘I know.’ Tye gripped the wheel harder, quietly seething inside. Growing up in Haiti she’d never had much of a formal education, apart from English and elocution lessons, her father’s obsession – so she could talk like the woman who’d left them both. Con, on the other hand, had been educated in the smartest schools all over Europe, shunted from one remote relative to another after her parents –

  ‘Demnos has recently donated some splendid Futurist paintings,’ Coldhardt went on. ‘He’s reputed to have one of the finest collections of unusual art treasures in the world.’

  ‘How’d you get to crash his party?’ Tye wondered.

  ‘I’ve made some … significant purchases here in the past. When I received the invitation it made sense that we all attend.’

  ‘Are we going to rip them off?’ Con asked eagerly.

  ‘We’re going to hear what Demnos has to say in a neutral and elegant setting,’ said Coldhardt. ‘Now, you’re clear on your cover stories for the other guests?’

  ‘I’m your niece, trailing the art critic for Les Temps – who tragically can’t be here.’

  ‘And I catalogue exhibits for galleries, and private collections,’ said Tye, turning the Range Rover into an impressive driveway. ‘I’m hoping to catalogue Demnos’s.’

  ‘Giving us the perfect excuse to withdraw from polite society to a quiet room with dear Raul while we discuss the matter.’ In the rear-view, Tye caught him smiling to himself. ‘Many matters.’

  The deceptions started the second they arrived. Having parked the car outside the impressive stately home, Tye shimmied into the back seat. In her sheer black silk halterneck she made an unlikely chauffeur. The footmen who swooped down to open the doors for the elegant trio were all far too well-trained to peer inside the car, and that – plus the mirrored windows – successfully concealed the fact that there was now no one in the driving seat.

  Soon they were ensconced in a cream and crimson drawing room that rang with the dull drone of worthy conversation. Tye felt awkward and uncomfortable in her feminine frills and three-inch heels, sipping water and avoiding eye contact wherever possible. Con of course was loving it all in her lacy gold Lagerfeld with the cowl neck that bared pretty much her whole back – she could easily pass for someone in her twenties. Off duty for now, she was seizing whatever time she had: mingling, flirting, acting like she knew everyone in the room – or like she was someone who everyone there ought to know. She made mesmerising company, in every possible way.

  Tye turned to Coldhardt, who looked debonair as always in his tux, a white rosebud pinned to the lapel. ‘Have you seen Demnos yet?’

  ‘Be patient.’ He was staring across the room at an Indian woman in pale, shimmering green. And he wasn’t the only one. The small group around her were clinging to her every word like drowning men to driftwood, laughing when she joked, intent when she was serious. She was maybe forty, tall and willowy, her thick black hair swept up on her head, her ears pricked at least a dozen times with fierce yellow diamonds. She wore a snake bracelet on her upper arm, the gold curling sensuously around her dusky skin, twin diamonds for eyes. Her chin was thrust out at her audience, her shoulders pushed back. She was fully in control.

  ‘Who is she?’ Tye asked. Coldhardt didn’t answer, and she didn’t push it. She was well aware that his silence signalled he didn’t want to have to lie – he knew she’d pick up on the deceit at once. That particular skill was, after all, one of the reasons he’d bothered with her in the first place.

  ‘This is a wonderful party!’ Con reappeared beside them, her green eyes sparkling. ‘Come with me and mingle, Tye. It’ll be fun.’

  Tye considered. The woman in green was leaving the room, tugging along a crowd of admirers in her wake. Perhaps she could steer Con over in that direction, find out for herself who –

  ‘You’ll stay right here, both of you,’ said Coldhardt, looking past them. ‘Our man has arrived.’

  Tye turned to see a huge bull of a man moving purposefully through the crowd, besieged by beaming faces, his smile as strained as the crimson cummerbund holding in his girth. His dark hair was slicked back, slathered to his head with Brylcreem. His features seemed bunched up in the middle of his fat face: beady brown eyes too close together, a strong nose and thin lips peeping through his jet-black moustache and beard. Two young men in tuxes, solid and cleanshaven, walked watchfully behind him, obviously bodyguards. Just behind them came a third bruiser, with a small, delicate young woman clinging to his burly arm. She was in her early twenties maybe and dragged one foot as she walked, ignoring the circus about her, a look of furious determination on her sharp, aquiline features.

  Coldhardt moved effortlessly through the crowd to intercept the guest of honour, Tye and Con at his heels. ‘Raul Demnos,’ he announced smoothly, ‘how the devil are you?’

  ‘Nathaniel Coldhardt!’ Demnos shook him by the hand delightedly, ignoring his minders’ wary looks. He spoke English with barely a trace of accent. ‘I have been anticipating our meeting for so long!’ He lowered his voice. ‘Save me from these vain fools and hangers-on, please!’

  Coldhardt nodded to Tye. She stepped forward, held out her hand. ‘My name is Tye Chery, of the European Art Archive Project. Mr Coldhardt informs me that your collection has never been fully catalogued. I’d love to talk to you about how we work.’

  Demnos nodded knowingly, cast some fleeting smiles round at his entourage. ‘If you’ll excuse me? Regrettably, I must let a little business detain me.’

  ‘Will you be long, Father?’ The slender girl with the bad leg was acting casual, only her dark, sunken eyes betraying her anxiety.

  ‘Forgive me, Yianna, my dear. You must amuse yourself for a while without me.’

  Yianna set her mouth in a defiant pout, shifting her weight awkwardly on her bad leg. ‘Nothing changes,’ she muttered.

  Tye, not used to her heels, had difficulty keeping up with Demnos and the others as they hurried down a corridor to a quietly elegant curator’s office. He directed one bodyguard to stand at the door. The other followed him inside.

  ‘We can talk freely here,’ said Demnos. He turned to Tye, and looked her up and down coldly. ‘You’re quite right, my dear. My collection has never been catalogued. Nor will it ever be.’

  She shrugged. ‘Just a cover.’

  ‘You have great secrets in your collection, yes?’ Con enquired, a greedy gleam in her beautiful eyes.

  ‘Many. But it is the greatest secret of all that I seek to add to it. And why I come to you, Coldhardt.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘These girls … I take it you trust them?’

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘Implicitly.’

  Tye glanced at him, surprised but pleased. Con was actually blushing with pleasure; Coldhardt threw her a brief smile, which she caught and devoured.

  Then Coldhardt’s manner grew serious. ‘What you’ve intimated to me so far has been most interesting. Now I’d like you tell us the whole story.’ He nodded to the bouncer. ‘Provided you trust your … assistant?’

  ‘He does not speak English.’ Demnos smiled grimly. ‘He cannot know what I am saying. That is why I trust him.’ He paused. ‘My story begins with a man named Imhotep.’

  Tye nodded. One of the names that Jon
ah had pulled out of the Spartan cipher.

  ‘He lived in the 27th century BC. He is known as the world’s first doctor. The first to map the human body. The first to accurately diagnose and treat disease, to bring the art of healing to mankind. But he was not only a healer. Imhotep was a great architect. He built the first pyramid in Egypt. He was a priest, a scribe, a sage, a poet, an astrologer.’

  ‘And a big bore at parties, yes?’ Con was silenced with a warning look from Coldhardt.

  Demnos was not amused. ‘To you, in your ignorance, he is a joke. But to the ancient peoples, he became something to be worshipped. A hundred years after his reported death, he was made a medical demigod. Two thousand years later he was declared a full deity – a man who truly became a god.’

  ‘Two thousand years …’ Tye was impressed. ‘That’s a long time to stay famous.’

  ‘His story does not stop there.’ Demnos’s dark eyes were burning into her own. ‘Greek and Egyptian cultures became intertwined after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and the Ancient Greeks honoured him too. They made him as one with their great god of healing, Aesculapius – or, as he is better known, Ophiuchus, the serpent handler.’

  That name again, thought Tye.

  ‘He received his title – and his reputation – from the day he witnessed a serpent restore a dead serpent to life. From then on, he somehow used the power of the snake to heal people – even to bring them back from the dead.’ Demnos lowered his voice. ‘But Hades, the god of the underworld, grew tired of this upstart stealing souls from his domain. He asked that Zeus slay the healer, to bring order back to his world. Zeus did so – but placed Ophiuchus in the sky as a constellation of stars, that he might be remembered for all time.’ He paused. ‘Ophiuchus is the thirteenth sign of the zodiac.’

  Con looked puzzled. ‘Thirteenth sign? I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Few have,’ he sneered. ‘His figure towers in the sky between Scorpio and Sagittarius.’

  Tye glanced back at Coldhardt and gave him an Is this going anywhere? look. But he ignored her, listening in silence.

  ‘It is said that he once held the secret of immortality itself – Amrita, the drink of deathlessness.’ Demnos was starting to sweat, and dabbed at his high forehead with a white handkerchief. ‘Ambrosia, that brings unending life to the body of one who tastes it.’

  ‘It is easy to say that once he’s dead and gone,’ said Con. ‘It builds his cult, yes?’

  ‘But he is not gone, my dear,’ hissed Demnos. ‘The memory of Imhotep was kept alive because the man himself was kept alive.’ Demnos’s eyes held a shining passion, his voice had grown hoarse. ‘I have evidence to suggest that Ophiuchus was not simply linked to that great architect and healer …he was the same man.’

  Tye stared at him. ‘You’re saying he drank this Amrita stuff, and lived for over two thousand years?’

  ‘Perhaps longer,’ breathed Demnos. ‘It is even possible that thanks to the Amrita …he cannot die!’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Hey, Jonah,’ called Patch. ‘You’re on TV.’

  Jonah looked up sharply, put down his snooker cue. He’d spent most of the evening taking practice shots, and had just failed to pot a red for the sixth time. He’d never played on a full-sized table before; predictably he was just as crap as he was on a smaller one.

  He followed the sound of a grave-voiced newscaster to a cosy room leading off from the main hangout. Patch and Motti were slouched on a massive couch in front of an even more massive home cinema system. The TV screen was maybe a little larger than Mars. It showed a reporter outside Jonah’s old prison.

  ‘… Wish was described by staff at the Young Offenders’ Institution as a quiet and amenable boy. He had received no visitors and corresponded with no one …’

  ‘Geek, they’re calling you a loser on TV!’ honked Motti.

  ‘They should look at you now, Jonah,’ said Patch with an encouraging smile.

  ‘Security is being tightened in the wake of the extraordinary jail-break,’ the reporter went on, ‘but accusations of incompetence have been denied by the governor …’

  ‘How can he deny it?’ Motti looked genuinely affronted. ‘Geek, I dunno how you stuck it.’

  ‘Motti, would you stop calling me “geek”?’

  ‘Sorry, geek.’ He grabbed the remote and zapped to a music channel.

  Jonah said nothing, but he was relieved. His legs had gone kind of wobbly. He wished he was tougher. But the truth was, hearing about his own breakout on TV had suddenly made it all more real. It had rammed home the fact that there really was no going back now.

  Patch knelt up against the back of the couch. ‘Got the most amazing satellite dish out in the grounds,’ he said. ‘Can pick up just about anything on earth. All the pay channels, even hot girl action and stuff!’ He paused. ‘Only thing is, Con said she’d brick my balls if I ever tried to watch any.’

  ‘Don’t lose no sleep over it,’ said Motti. ‘She’d have to find them first.’

  Patch laughed good-naturedly. ‘Anyway, Tye says I’m a big enough jerk-off already.’

  Jonah forced a smile, weighed down by his thoughts. ‘Where’d Tye learn to fly and stuff?’

  ‘Smuggling in the Caribbean. She’s from Haiti,’ said Motti.

  ‘What did she smuggle?’

  ‘What didn’t she?’

  ‘Never met no one smarter than Tye,’ Patch said, moving the subject along. ‘You can’t get nothing past her.’

  ‘What about Con?’ Jonah asked. ‘How’d she pick up the mesmerism – join the Magic Circle or something?’

  ‘One of her old-timer relatives had this stage hypnotist act back in the 1960s,’ said Motti. ‘They call it neurolinguistic programming now – like big words can explain it all away.’ He snorted. ‘Anyway, Con’s a real quick learner. And when Grandpa couldn’t teach her no more she cleaned him out, quit school and struck out on her own. Conning nice, rich old men who wanted to adopt her. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Looks like Coldhardt succeeded where they didn’t,’ said Jonah.

  ‘Yeah, well, Con and Coldhardt speak the same language.’ Motti idly drummed his fingers on the couch along to the music. ‘Green and crisp.’

  ‘Apples?’ joked Patch.

  ‘Cash, numbnuts.’

  ‘Will Coldhardt bring the girls back tonight?’ Jonah wondered.

  Motti looked up at him sharply. ‘Miss the eye candy, huh? Well, you better make sure looking’s all you do.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that!’

  ‘Coldhardt don’t allow nothing else, see. We got a working relationship. Anything else, shit gets messy.’

  ‘You’ve got a lovely way with words, Motti.’ Jonah shook his head. ‘I just meant, will Coldhardt be bringing them back here tonight?’

  ‘When they’ve done what he needs them to do.’ Motti turned back to the TV. ‘They ain’t gonna turn into pumpkins if they’re out past midnight.’

  ‘So are you free to come and go?’

  Motti rolled his eyes. ‘If we want. But since there’s nothing to do for miles around and we got all we need in here –’

  ‘Isn’t it kind of like being under house arrest?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Patch gestured around. ‘But what a house!’

  ‘You need to cool it some, geek,’ said Motti. ‘Why not go to the fridge, open the door and stand there for a minute? Then grab a beer from inside and bring it to me.’

  Jonah smiled despite himself. ‘Good of you to think of my welfare like that.’

  Patch followed him out into the main room. ‘I’m glad you’re in with us, Jonah.’

  ‘Yeah? Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s just nice. You know, there being more of us.’

  ‘Right. Sugar-daddy Coldhardt and his five clever children. Just a normal happy family.’ As he opened the fridge door, he saw Patch do his best to hide a hurt look. ‘Hey,’ he sighed. ‘I’m sorry, OK?’

  ‘It’s kind of mes
sed up, and it ain’t always happy, but it is family.’ Patch smiled, an honest, simple smile. ‘I’m glad you’ve joined us, mate. See, we’re all each of us has. To me, this place is home. And I’ll do anything not to lose it.’

  Jonah nodded. ‘And you’d take me into your family, just like that?’

  ‘Another person watching my back?’ He grinned. ‘’Course I would. Life’s too short to waste it freaking out over stuff. You gotta go with the flow, right?’

  ‘How long have you been with Coldhardt?’

  ‘Just over a year and a half. Coldhardt and Motti found me on my thirteenth birthday.’

  ‘And threw a surprise party?’

  ‘Could say that.’

  Jonah took out a beer. ‘Were you inside like me?’

  ‘No. Squatting.’ Patch held out his hand for a beer. Jonah passed him a Dr Pepper instead, and he rolled his eyes. ‘These blokes, they let me squat with them, all round the country. I got ’em inside really cool places, see? So long as you don’t use force to break in, you can squat anywhere.’

  ‘And I’ll bet you could break into 10 Downing Street without scratching the lock.’

  ‘Probably,’ he agreed brightly. ‘See, most people think it’s tools that get you in. That all you got to do is shove it inside and fiddle around. Well, they’re wrong. That pick’s gotta be an extension of you. It’s just running over the pins, sliding through the keyway, sending you a little picture of what’s going on inside.’ The tone of his voice grew reverent. ‘You have to listen to what it’s saying to you, learn its personality. You gotta feel the tiniest turn of the pins and the plug …’

  Jonah looked at this kid who was fourteen going on forty. ‘Spiritual lock-picking?’

  ‘Sound like an arsehole, don’t I?’ Patch smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry. Just that I’ve been picking locks since for ever. My mum used to dump me with the guy downstairs while she …Well, anyway, he was a locksmith. I spent a lot of time there. I could torque before I could talk, you know?’

  Jonah looked at him blankly.