‘Cause and effect, Ben. The feet were the result of this event! Come on, think!’ Aleksey wanted to point out that they weren’t students in the professor’s doctoral thesis seminars and at the same time remind the little man who worked for whom. But he didn’t. He kept quiet and hoped someone else would answer.
‘The hot pokers up the bum?’ Squeezy began to write his brilliant offering down, but Tim thumped the table, making him jump.
‘The auction! At Sotheby’s. Some information about the location of theNicholaswas being handed down from father to son for generations, wasn’t it? But that chain broke with Robert Frobisher when he was lost. On Henderson Island. Yes, I know. In the Pacific. What would you do, if you were marooned, facing death from starvation—okay, after you’d killed and eaten everyone else, God forbid I forget my audience—what would you do if you had this knowledge burning inside your head?’
Aleksey leaned forward. ‘You’d write it down.’ He caught the moron nodding and actually doing just this on his piece of paper.
‘Exactly my thought. Harry’s not the only one who knows about theNicholas, is he? As with all the other wrecks he told us about—some found, some not…but all known about as historical record. So dozens of people might have the legend of theNicholasin their minds, waiting for a hint, a story, a rumour to emerge—like great whites circling. And something does surface: the items that were found in the cave with the skeletons.’
Squeezy was writing furiously. ‘Go on.’
Tim frowned and peered at the paper. ‘Why are you writing this down?’
‘What!’
‘Ignore him, professor. It’s always the wisest course. Go on.’
‘Yes, well, Sotheby’s often makes a bit of a fuss about anything with historical interest and the like. And that often gets picked up by the papers—I mean, only yesterday I was reading inThe Guardianabout the Freddie Mercury collection that’s coming up—so it’s not a stretch to think that the sale of items from the survivors of theShrewsburymight stir up some interest in those hovering around the legend of theNicholas.’
‘Just like my old mate Sharpie.’
‘Who went missing after visiting the auction.’
Tim nodded to Ben’s addition but then explained with a slightly self-satisfied smirk, ‘More to the point, Ben,so did the items that were for sale.’
‘What?’ Aleksey rapped his finger on the table. ‘What do you mean?’
Tim held up his phone. ‘I looked it up. Theft of three items from the sale.’
The moron frowned. ‘You accusing Sharpie?’
‘Oh, no, sorry, obviously, I know he was a friend of—’
‘Nah, I mean, that’s him to a tee. Fucking couldn’t leave a dump in the bog cus he’d sneak in after an’ nick it. Light-fingered little bugger was old Sharpie. We just let him have the stuff he nicked once we’d seen that old pile he lived in.’
Aleksey narrowed his eyes at the cretin. ‘What was that thing you said about the house? In English, please.’
‘Yeah, interesting.’ He appeared to be thinking, which was worse than the imaginary note-taking. ‘Expectations. They had expectations that weren’t fulfilled. Like they lived on lost hopes and bloody dreams alone, waiting for something good that was coming…any day soon…can’t help themselves because…they were expectingsomething. They knew about theNicholas, didn’t they?’
Aleksey nodded. ‘They did. But not where it actually was.’
‘A break in the continuum of knowledge when Robert Frobisher was lost.’ Tim was looking so smug he was put in an immediate and emergency-level headlock, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much.
Aleksey turned to Ben. ‘Sharpie stole those items.’
‘One of them was a map maybe?’
Aleksey wrinkled his nose. He couldn’t imagine a map with a big X on it and the titleLocation of the Lost Treasure of The Aztecsbeing openly sold at auction. ‘Hidden, yes. Aconcealedmap.’
‘But Sharpie knew enough to want those items—I mean, they were meaningless to the auction guys, so I guess you had to have some kind of knowledge.’
Aleksey nodded. ‘Contextual background, as ourseniorresident genius has just pointed out.’ Tim couldn’t breathe, so he couldn’t acknowledge this compliment, but he did begin to tap the moron’s piece of paper urgently.
Upon being released but after being mussed and pummelled for a moment, he choked out, ‘We need to visit Satis House—question the owner.’
The moron, writing this down, obediently stopped. ‘He’s dead, matey. Keep up. He’s gonna be the feet for Dad’s new scarecrow.’
Tim wrinkled his nose. ‘That’s not funny.’ He glared at the three of them, and they sobered. ‘He had a younger brother you said. Frobisher Minor? When Sharpie died, his brother inherited the house. He still owns it.’ He handed his phone over to the moron who glanced at it and handed it to Ben. Aleksey peered over Ben’s shoulder at a newspaper article with the headlineLocal Landowner in Court Over Ancient Right of Waywhich began its story withLandowner, Orlando Frobisher, 35, put up private property signs…
