The Fragile Cage by Scott Hunter

Author:Scott Hunter [Hunter, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Twenty-Two

The folly steps led to nowhere – just a grassy bank, from the top of which it was possible to look down into the clearing below. The centre section of the bank had been bricked up, giving it the appearance of a blocked tunnel entrance. Did Munday’s tunnels lie behind this earthwork? Or beneath it?

Kyle surveyed the clearing from his vantage point at the foot of the steps. Torchlight flickered briefly somewhere on the far side of the folly and Jörgensen’s voice, amplified by the shape of the stonework echoed drily across the grass, berating one of the heavies, or perhaps encouraging them to search harder. Then a woman’s voice, raised in anger, followed by the sound of a palm on flesh, the voice abruptly cut off. Kyle’s fists bunched at his sides.

A shadow moved in front of the brickwork, a torch beam played momentarily on the façia and abruptly clicked off. Searcher number one, moving methodically along the folly’s base, looking for a gap in the render or some lever that would reveal an entrance. Was he alone? Kyle moved in a half-crouch to the near end of the steps, and waited for the guy to come to him.

The torch flickered again, then cut off. Kyle flattened himself against the stonework. A match flared in the darkness and the harsh smell of cigarette smoke drifted across to where Kyle was waiting. A shout broke the silence.

‘Ay? Anything yet?’

The voice came from above, somewhere on the top of the mound. Kyle was still glued to the staircase.

The nearest man called back. ‘Nah. Nothing. Is waste of time.’

‘Keep looking. That’s what he pays us for, OK?’

‘Sure.’

Soft footsteps receded above.

The smoker drew closer and closer to where Kyle was standing, muttering to himself. Kyle caught a word he thought might have been Swede, or Sweden. He calculated it would be ten to fifteen seconds before the smoker was close enough to grab, but in that he was mistaken; the guy’s patience was almost at an end. Without warning, he abandoned his inch-by-inch examination and shone the torch along the length of the monument base.

The light played at Kyle’s feet, halted, and then jerked up towards his face, but by then Kyle had already launched himself in a full-length rugby tackle. He smashed into the guy just below his midriff and brought him crashing to earth before he could make a sound. Kyle’s weight drove the the air from the other man’s lungs, and while he was preoccupied with trying to breath Kyle’s fist connected with the side of his head, his eyes rolled up in their sockets and his body went limp.

Kyle dragged him into the trees, undid his belt and trussed his hands behind his back. He extracted cigarettes and a box of Swan Vestas from his pocket, and as an afterthought he also removed the unconscious man’s shoes and chucked them into a thick growth of bramble. Hard to fight without footwear.

He moved back to the edge of the

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