Shakespeare's Skull: A Novel In Five Acts by Sean McDevitt

Author:Sean McDevitt [McDevitt, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-18T05:00:00+00:00

ACT FOUR

SCENE TWO: Foulness Island, Southend-on-Sea, UK.

Phillip’s plan to “invade” the island went off without a hitch. The guards at the gates of Foulness Island didn’t seem alarmed or even all that interested in the elaborate story he had prepared— nor did they seem to mind his visit fell well outside of the first Sunday of the month— as they waved him through, allowing his unmarked van to proceed without inspection or any detection of David Killian and María Elizondo curled up in the back and out of sight. Once he’d pulled in and slowly driven away for about a minute, Phillip turned his head toward the back of the van and called out “Sometimes it helps to have a real gift for dishonesty.”

David and María had worked very hard for several days to prepare for this excursion, and had taken the precaution of bringing along hardhats, not knowing just how much of a precarious condition the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin might be in after a fire. Small flashlights were in each of their backpacks, and they’d brought along their cellphones— checking and rechecking them during the drive down to Essex to ensure that they’d both been “silenced;” the last thing either of them wanted was one of their phones going off while they were skulking about the remains of a church that might still be under guard. They’d brought along a very light amount of snacks and travel mugs, both with tea and water, in preparation for a possible overnight stay if needed; also they had rounded up some protective gloves and surgical masks, again due to the uncertainty of just how bad an environment they might encounter in what they assumed to be a heavily damaged church.

Phillip had successfully managed to download the few pictures that Dr. Blue had taken with her practically destroyed flip phone, and they did prove helpful in locating the old church. He found it with relative ease, just as she had described, slowly driving the van through the stone gateway. As he carefully pulled alongside the fencing that surrounded the church— the chain link fence had been seriously bent and wrangled during the effort to fight the fire— he called out to Killian and María, who were still laying low in the back of the vehicle. “There’s still some police tape around the building,” he said, referring to the blue and white “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” tape typically found at a crime scene. “But I don’t see anyone here, there aren’t any police or civilians.” He continued to drive slowly past the building, examining it closely in the late afternoon sun. “The spire seems to have caved in, but the building otherwise seems intact. You can see scorch marks at the top of the building and also a few windows— there’s obviously been a fire, and it looks like a few burned-up bits of furniture were hurled out of it by the fire crews. What actually looks a bit worse is the surrounding area— it appears the fire spread and took out quite a few trees.

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