The Sacred Sword

Another dull thud from up ahead. A grinding of steel against steel, followed by a clanging crash.

As Ben had been expecting to happen any second, the dog let loose with a furious tirade of barking from inside the annexe, muffled behind the thick wall. Ben decided it wasn’t such a bad thing: the intruders would be aware that the nearest neighbour was far enough away not to be alerted by the noise. And the knowledge that the dog was contained in another part of the house would make them feel safe. Exactly how Ben wanted them to feel.

Up ahead, the shadowy corridor terminated in a T-junction. To the left, all was darkness. Around the corner to the right, a glow of light shone from an unseen doorway.

Ben stepped closer to the corner. From the source of the dim light he heard a man’s voice mutter something he didn’t catch. He stopped, blotting out the muted sound of Scruffy’s barking and listening hard. Was it the same voice he’d heard a moment ago? Impossible to tell, or to guess how many intruders there might be.

He advanced as far as the corner, back to the wall, ready with his club. He was within sight of the doorway now. It was a couple of inches ajar, and in the light that streamed out of it, he could see the outline of the splintered frame where the door had been forced open. Careful not to let his shadow play on the opposite wall, he stepped up to the door and peered around its edge into the room behind it.

Simeon’s study. The walls were lined with bookshelves. A simple computer desk stood in the middle of the room, with a flat-screen monitor and wireless keyboard. In the far corner of the study was a steel safe, like a short gun cabinet, bolted to the wall. The metallic crash Ben had just heard was the sound of it being jemmied open.

The man who’d broken into the safe was crouching beside it with his back to the doorway. He was wearing a black combat jacket. A black cotton ski mask was pulled down over his face. There was a pistol in a military-style holster at his right hip. As Ben watched, the man grabbed a brown A4-sized envelope from the safe. He stuffed it into the duffel bag at his feet, then reached back inside the safe and came out with a small black laptop, which he bagged as well.

Just one man. Yet Ben had heard him talking. To himself, maybe, or on the phone. Unless …

Ben suddenly felt something hard prod him between the shoulder blades. He half-turned and found himself staring into a fat black O nearly three quarters of an inch wide. The muzzle of a pump-action twelve-bore.

‘Lose the ornament,’ said the man with the shotgun. His face was hidden in the shadows. The accent was East London. The tone was calm.

Ben’s fingers loosened and the wooden statuette dropped to the floor.

‘Nice one,’ the man with the shotgun said. He advanced into the light. The eyes watching Ben through the slits in the ski mask were the colour of steel, hard and cold. He had the buttstock of the short-barrelled shotgun pulled in tight to his shoulder. That meant several things to Ben. The guy was bracing himself against the recoil, because he had no problem with pulling the trigger if he had to. It meant he was familiar with the weapon and had used it before. It also meant the shotgun’s five-capacity tube magazine was probably filled with hard-kicking solid slug loads that would take Ben’s head clean off his shoulders and paint the wall behind him with his brains.

All of which added up to the fact that these guys were no ordinary house-breakers, no run-of-the-mill opportunist crooks. They were professionals. And if the man with the shotgun was good enough to creep up on Ben like this, it meant he was very good indeed. Someone trained, like him, in the art of silence.

Or maybe Ben was just getting slow.

Ben retreated. The man’s eyes didn’t leave his. The muzzle of the shotgun was rock steady.

The other side of the wall, the dog was going wild.

‘Why are you here?’ Ben asked.

‘That’s it. There’s fuck all else in the safe,’ the man with the duffel bag said to his companion. He stood up and slung the strap over his shoulder, then left the study, brushing past Ben. The man with the shotgun waved the weapon ever so slightly towards the open doorway. ‘You. Get your arse in there,’ he told Ben.

Ben took a step backwards into the room. He saw the gunman’s gloved finger flick half an inch back from the trigger and depress the small round button set into the rear of the trigger guard. Safety off.

Ben got the picture. The guy wasn’t intending to leave any witnesses behind. Not the kind who still had their heads attached.

Nothing to lose, then.

Ben retreated another slow step, raising his arms either side of his head. The guy advanced. Ben watched the muzzle of the gun. A rapid step forward, and Ben’s hands flashed towards the weapon. He gripped the cold steel of the barrel and jerked it simultaneously sideways and towards him. As the gun was torn half out of his grip, the man instinctively squeezed the trigger and the gun went off like a bomb just a few inches from Ben’s right ear.

Now the pump-action was a lot less dangerous until it could be re-cocked. Ben had no intention of letting that happen. Still gripping the barrel he pushed it violently back towards the gunman, driving the butt end into the guy’s face. It caught him on the mouth. With a yell of pain and a spurt of blood he fell back and let go of the gun. Ben clubbed him over the head with the forend.

The whole disarming move had taken less than two seconds. Maybe I’m not getting that slow, Ben thought.

The man with the duffel bag froze for an instant, then took off down the passage. Ben spun the shotgun around in his hands and worked the pump as he leaped over the slumped body and out of the study doorway.

The escaping intruder was just rounding the corner. Ben could have shot him, but the blast would have blown the guy in half and Ben wanted him alive. Slinging the gun around his shoulder, he sprinted after him. The man crashed past the side table off which Ben had lifted the statuette earlier, and sent it spinning into Ben’s path. Ben vaulted over it, saw that he was catching up, and launched himself at the man with a flying rugby-tackle. Pinned by the ankles, the man sprawled heavily to the floor and let out a grunt of pain. Ben clambered after him. His left hand closed on the strap of the duffel bag as his right fist shot out to land a crippling hammer-punch to the man’s testicles.

The punch didn’t make contact. Ben didn’t see the heavy boot coming for his face until it was too late. The kick slammed into his cheekbone with a huge amount of force behind it, and sent him crashing back against the wall, still tightly clutching the duffel bag by its strap.

The intruder went for his pistol.

Ben went for the shotgun.

The guy thought better of it. He abandoned the bag and ran for the front door. Wrenched it open and burst out into the night.

Scruffy was barking dementedly from the other side of the wall. Ben struggled to his feet, dazed from the kick. He ran out of the open front door and saw the intruder heading around the side of the vicarage, making for the path that led through the back garden and down to the meadow.

Seconds into the chase, Ben knew he was at a major disadvantage. The intruder wasn’t necessarily the faster runner, but he didn’t have to sprint barefoot over the hard, cold ground carrying a cumbersome duffel bag and a shotgun. Ben had only just made it to the edge of the meadow when he realised that his quarry had disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, he heard the roar of an engine from beyond the trees, and a car took off at high speed down the road.

Chapter Thirteen

Ben hobbled back to the vicarage on his cut and bruised bare soles. No lights had come on in the neighbouring houses dimly visible through the trees. The blast of a shotgun, muffled within thick stone walls, wasn’t much more than a dull ‘pop’ from a few hundred yards away, not enough to raise the alarm even in a sleepy little village like Little Denton.

It was rather more than that from a few inches away, though. Ben knew he’d have to wait a day or two for the high-pitched whine in his right ear to subside and his full hearing to return. Back inside the vicarage, he strode back to the study. Now to revive his masked friend and get some truth out of him.