Firefly Gadroon Read online

  I started first on the flooring, treading carefully, then pushing the walls to make certain I was in something really solid. The feeling of emptiness was all about, as if I’d come to a deserted city. I tried to sense if anyone was here or not, and got no vibes. The fact should have reassured me and didn’t.

  I walked round and round coughing on the dust. A big empty room with a hole at one corner and a metal door at the other. No windows, no footmarks in the dust except mine. I reasoned that, if Drummer had been killed for seeing them load the stuff in, their route would have to be up one of the landward side legs. Logical. The walls were covered with graffiti, testifying to some intrepid holidaymakers getting their money’s worth out of the hired powerboats from Clacton or somewhere. A few faded scrawls from soldiers fervently marking the days off to demob, and that was that. I crossed to the door and pulled it back on its crossbar.

  It led up five steps to the start of two corridors. The left one. My torch flickered ahead. It looked about two hundred feet long and was littered with debris, though God knows where that came from. Pieces of planking, some glass and a bottle or two, even a brick. The ceiling seemed to be made of crossbeamed concrete and the walls were the same endless fawn-coloured tiers. I trod cautiously along it, realizing that the sound of the sea was getting fainter with each step.

  About halfway along, a double entrance led into what must have been some sort of briefing room. It was low but wide, with a central spiral of stairs upward round a thick circular pillar. I vaguely remember the silhouettes of these forts. They all have a flat tier, then a somewhat bulbous turret structure like the highest bit of a lighthouse. There were footmarks in the dust round the stairs, showing that Devvo’s happy band had been here. I climbed slowly, holding on to the rail. A metal door blocked the way about the level of the operations-room ceiling but it answered to a hefty shove, and I was through into the top of the fort. The lookout room was no more than thirty feet in diameter. Slit windows showed the distant shore lights directly opposite, the lightship’s signals from the Sands, and I caught a glimpse of the sea lights shining where the oil ships steamed north–south from the fields and refineries along the coast. I could even have picked out Joe’s station and the harbour lights of Barncaster Staithe, but I felt too vulnerable in this derelict place. It was beginning to give me the willies. Perhaps Devvo had heard of my renting a power yacht from Barncaster and was coming without lights, same as me. The slimy creep, I thought indignantly. Just the sort of rotten filthy trick he would get up to. The trouble was I had no real plan, which was what was making me mad. I’d assumed that if I’d got here first I’d somehow be in control, able to dictate terms to Devvo. Now I wasn’t sure I’d done right.

  I could threaten him with the police, of course, though Maslow was about as useless a threat as you could imagine, and Devvo had already got away with murdering Drummer. After a few times I decided to change my original non-plan to a new non-plan. The thing was to try to find the antiques first, maybe shift them to some place in the fort where I could keep them under lock and key, for use as a bargaining counter.

  Time was passing. Nervously, I hurried down from the turret into the big operations room and began an urgent search of the rooms leading off it. It was a huge place, bigger even than I had imagined. Like a ship, always so much more space than you dream of. I raced from one place to the next, shoving metal doors open and spluttering on the dust that hit me every time. A third of the way around, I was soaked in sweat, and realized I’d never get round the place in just a few hours. I had to think. Of course I’d known it would be a big task but assumed that my luck would carry me through. Maybe, I began to think, I’d trusted luck instead of brain.

  There was only one thing I hoped I had that Devvo and his goons hadn’t, and that was a knowledge of the deep chamber waiting for me in that special pillar. Maybe it was where the antiques were waiting . . . ? There was only one way to find out, though I hated the idea. Logically, any search had to commence there.

  I entered the rectangular room shining my torch every inch of the way. I didn’t want to touch anything until I was sure I wouldn’t go hurtling down into any abyss I couldn’t get out of. Despite my fear I felt a twinge of excitement. Plenty of signs of activity here. It was an isomer of the room I’d climbed into at the other corner of the fort. The same rubbish, same design – but here the dust was trodden and most of the debris had been shoved aside into one corner. There was the same dark rectangle, with ugly sea sounds loudly echoing up through it. This must be Devvo’s regular way in. I followed the treads easily, back into the corridor and along to a trio of steel doors. The adjacent enclosures were marked ‘Latrines’ and ‘Ablutions’. Most of the piping had gone and the doors hung askew on rusted hinges. I shivered. The idea of soldiery long gone was too spooky for me. I turned my attention back to the three rooms. The doors were solid metal, curiously new. My heart sank, though I’d have done the same thing. If I’d been Devvo, and my mob were robbing all the country houses in East Anglia and wanted to stash the loot away, I too would have found which rooms were situated near to one of the pillar climbs. Then I’d have built my own new steel doors in, just as he obviously had, and simply used the place as a cast-iron cran, a drop. Safe as houses – in fact safer.

  I shone my torch obliquely under the door and peered through the keyhole. It didn’t give much light but enough. By waggling my head I could spot the stuff. A load of small cases, wooden crates, even a few ordinary suitcases. Of course. Everything had to be small. You couldn’t winch up a suit of armour. Half of it would drop off or it would swing and be damaged. The room was some fifteen feet from door to wall, perhaps a former storeroom. The second too was packed, every sort of packing case, crudely nailed tea chests, brief cases, shopping bags taped up into ball shapes. And the third. Dog tired, I sat on the floor. This was Devvo’s cran all right. Now the enormity of the task came home to me. I’d found Aladdin’s cave but no trick to get the solid-steel doors open. And it would take a handful of men some time to drop that much down into my waiting boat. Ludicrous even to imagine one bloke trying it on his own, even if I could get inside. There was no way to snaffle his loot. And simply watching and reporting back to Maslow would be pointless. All evidence would be gone.

  My tired mind told me, with the heat on over Drummer, all traces of Devvo’s connection with the fort would need to be removed. And it had to go tonight, fast. It’s well known that antiques robberies are a summer pastime, ready for the relatively high prices of autumn auctions. It’s also the season when new deals bring money flowing in from the ‘nick trade’, as we call it.

  I’d lost my edge. Now I was waiting here with no advantage. Devvo would clear off laughing and leave me to trail home with my tail between my legs. Not even having to lift a finger, the bastard. I’d assumed I would pose a serious threat. Now I was no threat, not even a faintest irritation. Yet . . .

  I got up wearily and went back to examine Devvo’s route in again. This was the way he’d come, where his goons would drop the crated antiques into his boat. Easy with a net. The place was cold as ever, but there was something, something different. I shone round and walked every inch. Then I cursed myself for not having spotted the obvious. A notice in faded paint, letters two feet high no less. I’d walked past it for a quarter of an hour without reading the thing. ‘Ammunition winches not to be used for the carapace retraction.’ I had to think about that. There was a winch support projecting from the wall, its chains rusted and old but looking pretty serviceable. I tested it, swinging on it cautiously and trying to dislodge the projecting girder before searching for the iron rings. If they’d gone to the trouble of telling soldiers not to use this winch for shifting the piece of flooring, then it was proof that it could be used for just that purpose. I wound the chains round the wheels and pulled them through the iron rings in the carapace. Easier if I’d brought some oil. There were three rings set in the floor. A fourth was rusted to blazes.

  Good old Archime
des. I practically flayed my gloves pulling the link down so the concrete paving rose to lean on the wall beneath the winch. A space was left about four feet square, exposing quite respectable steps, suggesting that nothing here was meant to be hidden so much as preserved. Perhaps in the event of enemy forces attacking, and the defenders having to retreat like Douglas Fairbanks doing his sword bit on the staircase? I descended slowly, my torch pointing ahead. They were ammunition vaults, a core of chambers placed vertically alongside stairs and a lifting well as if for a regular elevator. Warning signs were everywhere. As soon as I’d realized what the chambers were I dashed back to the winch and dismantled its chain. I was in a nasty sweat. If Devvo turned up while I was down there I didn’t want him gently nudging the slab in place and leaving me entombed. That precaution gave me confidence as I decided to go further down. In any case, if Devvo’s loot was in the sealed rooms up top, what was in old Hepplestone’s concealed chamber down below at the bottom of this pillar’s steps?

  I went down scared in spite of all my precautions. The place looked untouched for years. No footprints in the dust, no graffiti, and no rubbish. Therefore Devvo had not been down here, either. And the winch up top had been practically unserviceable. At every level I checked in the ammunition rooms, one to every landing on the stairwell. Empty, just faded War Department instructions stencil-painted on the walls and doors.

  It was then that I realized I must be about the level of the sea outside. It felt horrible. Above the water you feel there’d be something of a chance. I stopped and pressed my ear to the concrete wall but jerked it away the same instant. It sounded frigging awful, as if the sea were trying to get in, the swine. I shone down and realized I was near the bottom of the pillar. Another couple of floors and I’d be on bedrock. But if anything valuable was hidden down here, surely decades of scrounging idle soldiers would have found it?

  The stairs came to a dead end at a door, metal and reinforced. A notice read: ‘C.O. or authorized Acting C.O. only.’ I felt something, steadily but gradually begin warming me. There was something down here, something worth coming for. I cleared my throat and shoved but the door wouldn’t give. I returned to the ammunition room on the landing above and set to on the door hinges with my tacklers’ knife. They are the usual military projecting pin type. I got the door off but clobbered my knife. Well, easy come. Gasping, I dragged the heavy door down the concrete stairwell, getting my arms practically dislocated at each bump and making a hell of a din.

  The door would do as a battering ram, seeing I had nothing else. About six feet from the lowest stair to the block room, just too much. I’d probably rupture myself but what the hell. With the torch lodged on one of the stairs I took some deep breaths and dragged the door up three steps. Holding it against the wall I undid my belt and got it round one edge. Not much of a sling, but it might give me a bit of extra leverage. I inhaled, heaved on my belt in an ungainly lift and staggered down the three remaining stairs, the strap cutting my hand. The full slanting weight of the bloody door was on my shoulder as I swung it forwards. It took me about ten minutes and seven more goes before the obstructing door yawed inwards and I could clamber through. I’d nearly creased my back.

  Light reflected from the whitewashed interior. It was a small chamber, the first room of circular design I’d seen in the fort, with the single word ‘Counterbalanced’ painted on the wall. A red arrow indicated the flooring. Not concrete in regular rectangles, I observed, but evenly laid around a central void about three feet wide. Something was so important that only the commanding officer was allowed in – or somebody he’d appointed to do a special job. And here, not anywhere else. I felt suddenly uneasy. A sealed room, restricted access, deep down where any intruder would hardly bother to look . . . And situated underneath a tier of rooms which in wartime would have been packed with ammunition. It had all the hallmarks of a place you retreat from, where the departing officer could create an explosive exit. I swallowed, dry as a plank, thinking how carelessly I’d slammed the door in with my improvised battering ram. I could have been blown to blazes.

  A ladder projected from a central hole. A mournful wail sounded outside, a ship of some kind. Whatever it was up to I fervently hoped it steered clear of the fort. I didn’t want it careering into this particular pillar while I was in its base. Other horns were sounding now. Stiff with goose-pimples I shone into the hole and saw the ladder end about twelve feet down on the bedrock. I almost yelped from fright. It was horrible, gazing down on to solid rock. Actual rock’s not bad in itself, but this bit signified the bottom of an ocean and I was down there, at the end of a great concrete tube.

  The sickening realization froze me. Sea bed. I moaned and backed off. No antiques, no valuables. Time for me to be off, I was thinking, when something flashed in the darkness, from a stray torch beam. I found I’d shot off to the doorway in a panic, one foot on the first upward step on the way out of the wretched place. Like the fool I am I dithered, my torchlight wavering shakily on the wall. A quick listen. Nothing except the distant muffled hoots of boats, more and more of them now. That gleam. Now I’d come so far, what was another few feet? I flashed my torch up the concrete steps. Still alone. There was still time.

  Practically creaking from the frigidity fear always brings, I lay on the floor with my head hanging over the edge and waggled the torch round. A concrete slab projected into the cellar from its wall, probably a support, but what for? I decided I was wasting time. Better to be frightened quick and get it over with. I got up and tried the ladder. It felt firm. I went down, prickling all over, and stood petrified on the living ocean bed. You could only call it a cellar with a knobbly floor, the remaining space where the hollow pillar had been constructed to stand on the sea bed. Quite empty.

  Nothing. Just a circular room, concrete walls, that one projecting slab. But a gleam had shone back at me. And it had come from down here. Faint, yet rich and lustrous and . . . and mauve! Like when I’d opened the little hollow leg of Hepplestone’s coal cage. I stepped about on the uneven floor, shining my light at the rock. It was so raw and irregular it appeared quite randomly cobbled, yet all of a piece. The engineers must have simply decided to build where they found a solid upthrust on the sea bed. No good doing it on sand. Even I could see that. They’d probably just blasted it to solid rock and built like mad. The North Sea in 1939 had been no place to dawdle. And one or two of the areas seemed faintly goldish, faintly green, shiny. I knelt to look. And suddenly knew. Goldish and green. Greek. Chrysos and beryl. Chrysoberyl. ‘Ooooh,’ I moaned, frightening myself with the chamber’s resonance.

  I’d been a fool. Chrysoberyl, the natural metamorphic rock which mothers alexandrite. One of the first things you learn in the antiques game is a list of old tricks and legends. I’d stupidly forgotten one of the commonest sayings, remember alexandrite is emerald by day, amethyst by night. I could almost hear Blind Benny’s voice, drumming his teachings into me night after night in Petticoat Lane as a lad. Take an alexandrite ring into daylight and it glows a perfect emerald. But dance in the glittering artificial lights of a ballroom and it transforms into a luscious deep amethyst. Old Man Hepplestone, one of the workers building this fort in the wartime rush, had put a flake of it in the bottom of the copied cage’s hollow limb to show not only where, but what. I’d seen it flash green in the cold sunlight when Maudie had chucked it on the fire. And by artificial torchlight in my cottage I’d seen its mauve gleam.

  I sank back on my heels, kneeling on a fortune. Weakly, realization began to come. I had everything. At last I had money, power, wealth to set up in London. Dear God, I could practically buy out Christie’s. I was rich as Croesus. Made for life. My hands were shaking as I fondled the craggy protuberances of the floor. The whole floor was chrysoberyl, one of the most valuable minerals on earth, worth every antique I’d ever handled—

  ‘Found anything, Lovejoy?’ a voice boomed suddenly from above me.

  I jumped a mile and found myself babbling at the shock. �
��Who’s that?’ I knew perfectly well.

  ‘Me. Devvo.’ The ladder twisted suddenly and crashed down, clouting my shoulder and knocking the torch away.

  Blackness enveloped the cellar. I scrabbled helplessly for the ladder. Just as I felt it a dreadful slithering sound shook the cellar. The faint rectangle above where a torchlight was suddenly wiped out. The darkness became total. For a second I could not understand what had happened. Then even when I realized Devvo or somebody had shoved the enormous iron door over the manhole it took me a full minute to realize I was sealed in. More slithering sounded. I could hear two voices.

  ‘What are you doing, you bastard?’ I bellowed, deafening myself.

  Devvo chuckled. ‘Fixing your tombstone, Lovejoy.’ A feeble line of light showed and was gone.

  ‘Let me out,’ I yelled, disgusted at my fear. The vicious pig had sealed me in, maybe wedged the metal door some way.

  ‘No, Lovejoy.’ Devvo sounded breathless from his exertions. ‘Serves you right, nosey sod. Going to hide down here and bubble me, were you? You can frigging well stay down there for good. Snide bastard.’

  ‘I’ll get you, Devvo,’ I screamed. I flung the heavy ladder upwards, nearly braining myself as it clanged on the door and crashed back. It caught my leg a chance swipe. Cloth and skin tore.

  ‘Keep trying, Lovejoy.’ Breathless but calm.

  ‘I’ll help you nick antiques, Devvo,’ I babbled, ashamed at myself. I’m pathetic.

  ‘Not now, you won’t.’

  ‘Please, Devvo. I’ll take back what I said about you killing Drummer.’

  ‘That old fool had to go, Lovejoy,’ Devvo called back. ‘Like you, mate. I’ve too much to lose.’

  ‘You’re not going to leave me, Devvo?’ Crawler.

  ‘I am that.’ His voice was receding.

  ‘I know where there’s stuff worth millions, Devvo.’ My screech echoed within the cellar. ‘Please, Devvo. It’s here. There’s a ton of chrysoberyl—’