Prologue
A thousand freezing needles hit my face.
Open my eyes. Close them again fast. Engage other senses.
The wind feels like it’s from Siberia. Another Beast From The East. It’s not winter though. I’ve been unconscious for a while, but I’m sure it’s early April – unless I’ve been out of it for several months.
The violent rain and bone-seeping cold are killing me from the outside, but the spiked wheel inside my head and the pain in my aching shoulders are internal. They are not of natural origin. Full consciousness is returning though.
I want to reach up and touch my head, to locate the source of the pain, but my hands are tied tightly behind my back. That explains why my shoulders are so bloody sore. I try to stretch my legs out, but they also appear to be bound together. This has one minor – very minor – advantage. The fabric between my legs is about the only dry patch of clothing on my whole body. I suspect it won’t remain that way for long. My jeans, jumper and jacket are already saturated.
The needles ease slightly as the rain softens. I dare to open my eyes again. It’s dark, and I’m lying in a ditch. I lift my head a fraction. The spiked wheel spins faster, and I squeeze my eyes shut in an effort to stop it. A moment’s deep breathing slows it to a manageable level. I allow my eyes to reopen and try to evaluate my surroundings. The ditch is full of grass, scratching my hands and neck. I can smell the distinctive aroma of gorse nearby. I’m on the moors somewhere. There’s a lot of moorland in Lancashire. I may even have been taken further afield. Yorkshire and Derbyshire are filled with similar terrain.
The rain increases in intensity, and once again those needles spear my head and hands – the exposed parts of my body. I close my eyes and pray. I try not to calculate my chances of being found. Dying of exposure is not how I would have chosen to go, but it is beginning to look inevitable.
Chapter One - Becky
Three weeks earlier
The tall woman under surveillance leaves the town house through the front door. She’s wearing a beige trench coat and knee-high boots. Her stylish appearance matches the confidence in her demeanour as she sashays to her expensive red SUV.
I raise my Kindle and pretend not to notice her. It’s 2.45 on a drizzly March afternoon, and she needs to pick her kids up from the primary school down the road. I guessed she would leave early to get a decent parking spot, but I thought she might have had the decency to look more flustered. According to her husband, the house from which she’s just emerged belongs to his business partner, and he’s pretty sure they’re having an affair.
My phone pings. I glance at it before answering. “Hi Joanna. Everything okay?”
“Fine. How’s it going?” She doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.
“Nothing exciting. She’s heading off now. I’d better follow. Speak later.”
My enthusiasm levels match those of my friend. The private detective dream has been mundane since we solved our first murder case. The bread and butter for the White Knight Detective Agency has revolved around infidelity and the occasional suspected fraud. I prefer the fraud, but none of the three cases we have at the moment are exciting enough to raise my pulse rate.
Starting the car, I follow my prey to the school. It makes sense to park further away; close enough to watch her, but far enough not to block a space for the other parents and grandparents on the school run. Seeing her get out and chat to another mum on the pavement, I set off again, and drive to HQ – aka Joanna and Will’s house.
***
Settled on Joanna’s couch with a mug of tea, I stretch my legs out. They’re stiff from sitting in the car most of the day following Mrs Blackstone.
“I can’t be doing with these cases for much longer. Is there anything more interesting in the pipeline?”
Joanna looks thoughtful, but before she can answer, there’s the sound of a key in a lock, and the front door opens. Will walks in brandishing a newspaper.
“Hi Becks. Mum, is the kettle on?” He waits for her to nod, then slips into the kitchen. He returns a couple of minutes later with coffee and the newspaper, which he was mean enough to take with him. “Have you seen this?”
“Didn’t get a chance.” I grimace at him and he laughs. “What is it?”
“I’ve been visiting Chloë. She had an inset day from school, so I took her to Blackpool to the zoo, but when I dropped her off, I picked up the local paper, and it makes for interesting reading.” He lays it on the coffee table, already opened at the key article. He reads aloud.
“BANK VAULT CRACKED IN EGG HEIST – In the early hours of this morning, the oldest bank in Preston was raided in a daring robbery. An estimated three million pounds in cash was taken, but more significantly, a vault was accessed. It is believed that the unique Fabergé egg, known as Necessaire, was removed from its secure hiding place where it’s thought to have resided for nearly seventy years. The man who placed it there is now deceased, but his family is offering a reward of twenty thousand pounds for its safe return.
“So, what do you think? D’you fancy an egg hunt?” Will’s eyes are alight with excitement.
“Yeah, why not? It’s got to be more fun that what’s going on at the moment.” I pick up the paper and skim through the rest of the article, but it’s mostly about the bank, confirming that no one was injured, and that there appear to be no clues.
“I know it looks fun, but don’t forget, you two, we are under contract to do the boring jobs that are driving us all bloody crackers. We still need to do those too.” Joanna’s expression is grim as she reminds us of our bread and butter.
“I know, Mum, but there are three of us. I’m sure we can squeeze in a couple of hours a day to sort this out.”
“Fine.” Joanna holds her hands up in surrender. “But I think we need to plan this. And assign tasks. Becky, have you ever been involved with detecting a bank robbery before?”
“There have been a few over the years, but mostly idiots in balaclavas holding up the cashier staff in broad daylight. Nasty, and there have been a few injuries, but we’ve always caught the perpetrators. This is different. You’re right. It will need planning.” I read through the first paragraph again. “Will, can you find out about CCTV?”
“That’ll be a police job, won’t it? They won’t give me access.”
“Use your special skills to get the information. I’m sure you’ve hacked into police records in the past. And you’re supposed to be teaching me and your mum how to do it.”
“I’m not supposed to teach you how to hack the police. That’s not what Roger said.”
Actually, Will’s protests are justified. Roger asked Will to train us in hacking, after he recruited us to his secret service team. Joanna has been working for him for a couple of years now, along with my husband, Matt.
“Okay, I added the bit about the police, but Roger would want us to learn how to hack the more difficult and sensitive institutions. It could prove useful.”
“Let me see if I can do it before we get cocky. I’ve never tried.”
“Well, if you can’t do the police hack, maybe you can get into the bank’s CCTV. That might be better actually. Go direct.”
Will has a long swig of coffee before answering. “That could be an option. Either way, I need to work on it by myself before showing you or Mum how it’s done. Maybe when you’re writing up this plan to schedule all our time, you can slot in a couple of sessions for hacking lessons.” He grins. “Otherwise, it’s never going to happen.”
“Sure.” I need to knuckle down to my other lessons too – the ones Roger asked me to keep to myself – the Russian language. I’ve been finding it challenging because of the different alphabet and some strange pronunciations, but I’m getting to grips with the basics now. Perhaps focusing on Russian lessons during surveillance would be more sensible than reading steamy romances.
Joanna interrupts my train of thought. “What should I do to get started? I can think of a few ideas.”
“Let’s start with those then. What are they?” I smile at her. We’ve been working together for about two months now, and I’m getting used to her ways of working. She knows exactly what she wants to do, but wants my buy-in too.
“While Will is checking out CCTV from the bank, I thought I’d have a little drive round the area and do an old-fashioned scout for clues. Do you fancy coming with me, Becks?”
“Yeah, why not? Tomorrow morning? Then I can stake out Mrs B again in the afternoon. She seems to spend all her mornings at the gym, so I should be safe to go to Preston for a while.”
“Great. I think that’s the best place to start.”
“You said you had a few ideas. What were the others?”
“We should learn a bit more about this egg that’s been stolen. I wouldn’t know it if I fell over the bloody thing at the moment.”
“That’s a fair point. I’ll leave you to research that one. I need to write up my report for Mr B this evening.”
“Why the deadline?” asks Will.
“No idea, but he wanted an update by tomorrow, just to know if his suspicions have legs.” “Do they?” He grins at my wording, so I expand.
“Well, they’re not quite sprinting down the street yet, but they’re strolling round the block.”
Joanna and Will both laugh at that. I finish my coffee and wish them a nice evening before heading home to write that report.
Waiting for me in my lounge is Roger, sitting casually on my sofa chatting to my husband, Matt. He stands up when I enter and greets me with a handshake.
“How are you, Becky? I haven’t seen you since your successful completion of the Troy case.” “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?” I know he’s going to ask me about my progress with the subjects he asked me to study. He doesn’t disappoint. “And the Russian? How’s that coming along?”
“Okay. It’s still early days though.”
“Not really. I suppose I gave you six months to become proficient. I’m condensing that to three. You’re going to need it in your new case.”
“What do you know about our new case?” I glance over at Matt, who’s following the conversation with obvious interest and some concern. He beckons to me to sit down, and I take a seat on the chair opposite the sofa. Roger sits back down too and takes his phone from the inside pocket of his grey suit jacket. He touches the screen a few times before handing it to me.
The screen shows the same article that Will had shown us. “I want you to take this on,” says Roger.
“It sounds like more fun than shadowing unfaithful spouses. We were just discussing this earlier today.” I skim through the article to see if there’s any additional information in the online version, but it looks identical. I scrutinise Roger as I hand him back his phone. “Why do you want us to work on this?”
“I believe the blend of skills you and your friends provide may solve this case.” His words are encouraging, but as usual his face is unreadable.
“Why would you get involved in something like this?” I ask, before glancing at Matt, hoping for reassurance that I’m not being unforgivably rude. He nods a fraction and winks, but just in case, I add, “I hope you don’t mind me asking.”
A hint of a smile crosses Roger’s face. “How much do you know about the Necessaire?”
Chapter Two - Joanna
Tuesday
With Becky gone, Will and I sit down in front of our laptops at the kitchen table. We’ve always enjoyed each other’s company, especially when my bastard ex-husband was out of the house. It was such a relief, and Will has always been such a sweet boy – now grown into a lovely young man.
I check the newspaper for the name of the stolen egg, and type ‘Necessaire’ into Google. To discard the stupid number of items about toiletries, I add the word ‘egg’. This narrows it down to about three hundred thousand results. I get up and make another coffee. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.
It is difficult to discover much about the egg, as it’s technically been lost since 1952, when it was sold in London to ‘a stranger’ for £1,250. There are suspicions it’s been sitting in the bank vault since then, but no one knows for certain, even though the bank manager claims that it’s true, and that the thieves took the egg in the raid.
I struggle to find a decent description of it. There’s a single black-and-white photo of an egg sitting in a box. It appears to have patterns on it, and it’s described as decorated with rubies, diamonds, sapphires and emeralds. Apparently it contains a ‘surprise’ of women’s toilet articles, whatever the hell that means. After this description, I’m still not convinced I would know it if I fell over it, but it is supposedly unique, so maybe I’m being unfair.
The company of antique dealers who sold the egg in 1952 was named Wartski, and they followed the buyer’s request for anonymity – very kind of them, but not helpful to us. We’re going to have to assume for now that the news article was right, and the stolen egg is the Necessaire. It will be a shame if it isn’t, but a bank robbery is a legitimate reason to work on a case.
My phone pings. Becky has sent me a WhatsApp.
‘Roger is instructing us to work on the Preston bank heist. He wants us to find this egg.’
‘Why?’ I’ve not heard from Roger for a while. He seems to prefer going through Becky, and I don’t think he’s forgiven me for a stupid mistake I made last year. Although by rights, he shouldn’t know it was my fault.
‘He didn’t provide that information, but he will pay us to work on it for a month. £1000 each!’
‘WTF!’ I’ve always suspected Roger’s payment methods to be unconventional. Not that he’d do anything illegal, but I don’t know how these payments are justified on his expense tab. When I’ve worked on projects for him in the past, money appeared in my bank account already taxed, and shows as payment from ‘R Taylor, Local Government’. He clearly has his channels that he can work through, but quite what he’s expecting for a month’s salary of one grand… I dread to think.
