Hot Pursuit
Very early next morning, Rebecca burst through the door of the room she and Laura shared, so early that it was barely light outside. On the horizon, tufts of grey cloud flecked a crimson sky above a dark blue sea. Rebecca was clutching one of the leather volumes James Hendricks had given her. She sat down on Laura’s bed, cross- legged. Laura propped herself up, bleary-eyed.
‘Becks? It’s the middle of the night! Why aren’t you in bed?’
‘Never mind about that! I’ve been up for hours reading these parish records. It’s amazing! 1955, on 3rd July the curate Sidney Brazier hears strange and unnatural cries late at night, emanating from somewhere deep in the chapel. Then on the 5th July, a couple out for a walk hear the same thing. They are convinced it came from under the earth and fear it was the cry of the devil.’
‘What was it?’
‘The writer, who I think is the vicar of the time, one Theodore Betts, declares the majority belief is that it is the ghost of the Black Monk. He cites another, age-old record made by the Reverend Cornelius Gilchrist in the seventeenth century, of a conversation between Gilchrist and the gravedigger who had put Nathan Trevellyan in the ground. The man, Silas Weaver, swore he had heard hammering from the inside of the coffin. Terrified, he feared the hand of the devil himself. He ran to Reverend Gilchrist to tell and seek absolution. Apparently Nathan Trevellyan was buried alive … and his spirit is therefore supposedly trapped in eternal purgatory.’
‘Oh my God!’ Laura was horrified. ‘Your ghost, Becks! It’s your ghost!’
‘No of course it isn’t! The 1955 incident wasn’t the Black Monk at all.’
Deflated, Laura stared at her, expecting her to continue. ‘… So? Who was it?’
Rebecca looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. ‘Wakey, wakey! Kapitan Kraus, of course! A bit further on, Theodore Betts describes the restoration of the chapel. There’s a lot of waffle as you’d expect, then he gets to the window: ‘started in 1948 and took seven years to complete.’ Seven years, 1955 by my maths, when we know Kraus died.
He talks about ‘The quiet one’ who does all the work, a master glass cutter from Leipzig … Kraus came from Leipzig, remember the tape? Rupert’s Grandfather went there looking for him but couldn’t get there ’cause it was in the new East Germany, controlled by the Russians. Nobody got in or out, unless they were a spy.’
‘So if glass-cutter was his job, the window could have been his ‘life’s work’ then?’
‘You’re waking up! Now I am convinced there is a clue in the window. Guess where we are going this morning? Come on! Rise and shine!’
In a swirl, Rebecca turned and was out of the door in an instant. Her head poked back round. ‘I’ve sent Drew off trailing Sky, to see if he leads us to Rupert, as I think he will. Come on! Up and outside in five! No time for breakfast, seeing as you’ve lazed about in bed so long already.’ She gave an exaggeratedly sweet smile and was gone before Laura could respond.
* * *
The bike Drew discovered in the barn was not the most modern he had ever ridden.
Judging by its condition, and having to extricate it from under a pile of broken fencing, it had not been used in ages. There were only three gears, very dodgy brakes and an old-fashioned bell, which he made up his mind immediately not to use. Far too embarrassing.
It was gingerly and with trepidation that he set off down the lane.
It was before seven and still barely light. As he wobbled along astride his new steed, Drew muttered darkly about the irony that such tasks always landed on him. But Rebecca’s night-time vigil with the parish records had left her in that determined mood with which he knew argument was pointless. Wrenched from his warm bed, he was tasked with locating John Sky and to discover what had happened to Rupert. There was now little doubt of Sky’s involvement and good reason to suspect he had engineered Rupert’s disappearance.
Rupert had said that Sky worked at offices by a roundabout on the outskirts of St Morwenna’s. This was his destination, a couple of miles away through the Cornish lanes.
The morning air chilled his face as he gathered speed, his confidence in the machine he was riding slowly growing. It was not long before the rooftops of St Morwenna’s came into view, slumbering peacefully in the golden morning light. Birds twittered in the hedgerows and all in all it looked like being an idyllic day. Difficult to believe that there could be such a drama playing out with Nazis at large in the Cornish countryside.
As he rounded a bend, he approached a roundabout. Right next to it was the entrance to an office complex. Lights were on and he could see people moving about inside the reception area, so he dismounted and went through a revolving glass door. Behind a reception desk a woman sipped a cup of tea.
‘You’re up early. Can I help you, young man?’
‘I’m looking for John Sky. Can you tell me which office he works in?’
The woman looked blankly at him. ‘John Sky? Nobody here by that name, dear. Are you sure you have the right place?’
‘This is Tremarrion Holdings?’
‘Yes, that’s us.’
‘Then this is where I was told he works.’
‘Sorry. I know everyone, dear. Never been a John Sky here. Nice old bike by the way! My old Dad used to have one of them! Ha ha!’
Drew gave a quick smile, colouring slightly. Back outside, he remounted the ‘nice old bike’ and sat, undecided what to do next. So Sky must have lied about where he worked.
If he did not work here, then where did he go every day? His eye was drawn to the distant towers of the monastery, beyond the hilltop. Monks, monastery, Himmel … Sky, he mused.
At least a possibility.