Daniel pulled up the false floorboard in the pantry at Ashwell Lodge and took out the silver-plated box. When Mason reached for it, Daniel shook his head.
‘There’s more,’ he said and opened the box, revealing the severed finger inside with the black twine around it. Daniel pointed to the symbol on the wall. ‘We think there must be four of these symbols to go with the compartments in the box but so far we’ve only found three. I’ll show you the others.’
And he did.
Mason, Jiff and Rosie followed him through the rooms of Ashwell Lodge, with Frank watching them on Skype as Mason held out his iPhone. ‘He’s my insurance policy,’ said Mason. ‘I’ve got no reason to trust you at all.’
Daniel showed him where the golden wedding band was hidden and the lock of hair.
He put them in the compartments of the silver box and hooked the pieces of twine to the clasp in the centre of the lid in the same way the finger was attached.
‘There’s one more item to go in,’ said Daniel. ‘But we don’t know where it is. We think it’s hidden somewhere in one of the downstairs rooms, at least that’s what Rosie saw. But we couldn’t find it.’
‘Which room?’ asked Mason.
‘We’ll show you.’
Daniel and Rosie led them into the room that might once have been the dining room. He pointed at the mattress. ‘We sat here for some time, trying to work it out. But Rosie didn’t see anything.’
Rosie was watching Daniel. Listening to his every word. She licked her lips. ‘I might feel ready to try again,’ she said.
Mason’s eyes sparkled. ‘Go on, Rosie. I’d like that very much.’
When she closed her eyes, Daniel knew she was pretending to make the fit. There was no pain in his chest. No blood from her nose. The strain in her face was an act and, when he realized, he put his hand to his chest as if pretending to feel something, making her performance seem all the more real.
‘It’s somewhere,’ she whispered. ‘It’s somewhere in this room.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mason was walking around, inspecting the walls for another symbol. ‘I don’t see anything. There’s nothing here.’
‘It is,’ she hissed. When she opened her eyes and sat down on her haunches, she looked up at Mason. ‘I need a rest.’
Daniel pointed to the fireplace. ‘Why don’t you go and check that end of the room? I’ll look this end while Rosie takes a moment.’
Daniel listened as Jiff and Mason searched the wall and then knelt down and inspected the hearth. He held his breath as he listened to them rooting around like pigs in the dust and the grime.
When Jiff stopped and cursed excitedly, he didn’t look round. He waited for them to prise up the loose tile.
‘We’ve found it!’ shouted Mason. ‘We’ve got it.’ Daniel turned and saw Mason holding up the human tooth by its black piece of twine. ‘Give me the box. Let me have it.’
Mason put the tooth in the compartment and hooked the piece of twine round the clasp.
‘What do you think happens now?’ asked Mason.
He was about to ask again when Daniel pointed. ‘Look,’ he said.
A misty, shadowy figure was emerging from out of the floor and drifting towards him.
‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’ whispered Mason. He gripped Daniel and turned him to face the ghost. ‘Can you see him, boy? Can you?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Daniel. He thought he heard Jiff cursing, but his heart was pounding too loudly to hear properly as the ghost drifted closer, just a dark silhouette in the shape of a man.
‘Where’s Lawson?’ it asked, in a voice that shimmered all around them as if coming from the walls of the building itself.
‘We’re friends of his,’ said Daniel. ‘Lawson’s dead. We’ve come to collect a flask. Is it here?’
The figure drifted towards Daniel and pressed its fingers into the boy’s chest, making him gasp, then pulled them free.
‘A friend indeed,’ said the ghost. ‘Yes, the flask is here.’ It floated towards Mason and looked at him. ‘I’m the keeper of the flask. I decide who has it. It’s your fate to be the one. You’re destined to have the flask. That’s what you’ve always believed, isn’t it? That you and this boy met for a reason.’
Mason nodded. Little flecks of spit were caught in the corners of his mouth and he licked them away. ‘Yes,’ he said in a trembling voice. ‘Yes.’
The cellar was lit by three cross-beams of light from Mason’s and Jiff’s phones and Daniel’s too. There was no reception down beneath the house and, before the Skype connection had been lost, Mason had told Frank to stay with Agatha. But the man hadn’t seemed too pleased, worried about missing out on his cut that Mason had promised if they found the flask, cursing and shouting, his tongue flicking out like a viper’s over his cleft lip. But Mason didn’t seemed too bothered, shouting that Frank was paranoid before clicking off the phone.
The ghost pointed at a section of wall and asked Mason to push in one particular brick. As soon as he did, a trapdoor in the cellar floor sprang open and Mason strode towards it and peered down into the dark hole. The man took a few careful strides down the slippery stone steps until he was low enough to be able to stoop and see what was below, using his phone. A large dark room. Windowless. The walls damp and tinged with green.
Mason waved Jiff and Daniel and Rosie closer and the beams of light from the two phones moved with them across the floor until they were standing above the stone steps beside the trapdoor. Mason beckoned Jiff down a few steps and they panned their phones round the secret chamber.
‘There!’ shouted Mason. ‘Look, right there, on the far wall.’
When Daniel stooped to look too, he saw a golden flask set into the wall at the end of the chamber. It looked exactly like the one he had hidden in his pocket.
‘Daniel,’ said Mason excitedly, a big hand sweeping across his sweaty brow. ‘I want you and Rosie to remain at the top of the steps and keep your light focused down so I can see where I’m going. Jiff, stay where you are, and keep your phone straight. I want to see what we’ve got here.’
Daniel stood beside Rosie, shining his phone past Jiff’s humped back, and lighting up the steps. Mason walked carefully down and stood on the last step. ‘Hello!’ he shouted as if expecting someone to be there. ‘Hello!’ He turned and grinned at Jiff. ‘Keep that light directly on the flask so I can see it,’ he said and then he turned and stepped down on to the stone floor.
He crossed one flagstone, and then a second, and then a third, walking along the shaft of light from his own phone as if it was a balance beam. The ghost was beside him, drifting above the stone floor, telling him that the flask had been put here by its maker, Francis Green, and that Lawson had known about it and had wanted to keep it a secret from him. Mason was chuntering and cursing, calling Lawson all manner of names.
And then there was a click, like a bone snapping, as he stood on a segment of floor and heard the trapdoor at the top of the stairs flipping up.
As Daniel and Rosie jerked sideways so as not to be hit by the door closing back down, the last thing they saw was Jiff spinning round, humpbacked, to look at them, his eyes wide, and the phone in his hand lighting up a spot on the ceiling of the cellar.
And then the trapdoor locked shut back into the cellar floor.
Daniel heard shouts. Muffled through the stone. And then he realized he could hear nothing, that his imagination was only telling him that, and he turned to look at Rosie.
Inside the chamber, Mason was whirling round like a devil. He didn’t know which way to go, towards the flask or back to the steps where Jiff was lying, knocked out by the trapdoor which had swung over and hit him, his phone beside him.
The ghost was telling Mason things he could barely hear above his own cursing. That Francis Green had made the trap to protect the flask from men like him. That Lawson had discovered where the flask had really been hidden in the house. That he had found the trap and had come up with a plan to get rid of Mason.
‘You killed me,’ said the ghost. ‘Just like I’m going to kill you.’
‘I’m not dying. I’m not,’ roared Mason. ‘You can’t do anything to me.’ He went to the flask on the wall and reached out for it, only to find that it was a picture drawn with such skilful perspective that it looked real from all angles.
Mason roared again. ‘Let me out,’ he screamed, like some wild animal caged. ‘Daniel!’ he screamed at the ceiling.
But then he stopped when he heard the sound of rushing water.
‘What’s that? What’s happening?’ The ghost was drifting higher as two sluice gates opened in the walls at either end of the chamber and water started gushing in.
Mason roared again as the cold water quickly started filling the room. But the ghost was gone. Vanished through the walls.