Artifact E-Book

K T Bowes

• Herausgeber: K T Bowes
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

A stolen Artifact. A reluctant thief. An heir without hope.
Would you risk your future to protect the past?

Lara did and now she's regretting it.

What's so important about a piece of musty New Zealand history and why would she bring it half way around the world just to bury it under her aunt's stairs?

As Lara hides out in the rural English back water, word gets around there's an archivist in town. The local museum needs her help. Its latest discovery in the local church reveals a shameful history and she's sworn to secrecy.

Then there's the guy next door. Brooding, rude and arrogant, he's the world's worst neighbour.
They're hardly star crossed lovers, but their fates are definitely aligned.

What a pity they hate each other.
 

Leseprobe

Artifact

K T Bowes

Copyright K T Bowes © 2014

Published by Hakarimata Press

Dedication

To my friends in Market Harborough in memory of the good times spent there. You know who you are and how much you blessed my journey.

Chapter One

She hadn’t meant to steal. It wasn’t a conscious decision or her usual way of operating. The opportunity presented itself and she made use of it in a cold and calculating way. It proved easy, making the overwhelming sense of guilt so much worse as Lara handled the stolen item in gloved fingers. They trusted her. She took advantage. “What have I done?” she murmured to the empty room.

Escaped tendrils of her dark hair pitched forward over her shoulder as she sat hunched at the wooden table. She felt rotten, inside and out. A hand strayed to her face with the full intention of rubbing her eyes and noticing the gloved hand, Lara prevented the action. She couldn’t ruin the only pair of cotton gloves she brought back with her. They ended up in her suitcase by accident and she needed to keep them spotless to handle the artifacts. Lara’s crime meant this object and its companion were now her responsibility and the fact weighed on her heart. “I hope I can keep you safe,” she whispered to the precious items.

In films and novels, the hero would fling such things into a leather satchel and leap onto a train or off a bridge into fast flowing water. Nothing but naïve fancy. Mistreatment and contact with the open air would ruin the artifacts in seconds. Nobody bothered to research anymore. They just spat out a money-making film in which ancient maps were carelessly unrolled to deliver their secrets and then shoved back into a map carton without apparent damage. Lara’s experience and years of training told her differently. Even the act of unrolling after so many years of storage would cause them to rip and crumble, not to mention the other terrible and yet exciting exploits the viewers watched them endure. Even the most robust parchment would become confetti before the end of the final credits.

Lara sighed and leaned back in the dining chair, the elderly wooden slats pressing against her spine. Exhaustion gnawed at her bones. She’d spent the arduous flight from New Zealand fraught with terror. Any of the customs checkpoints represented a threat to her stolen cargo, especially if someone already reported it missing. Sydney, Bangkok, Dubai, London. Lara retraced her journey of two years ago; only the return journey didn’t contain excitement or anticipation. Her actions laced it with sleeplessness and misery.

To be caught transporting one item could have been down-played as accidental, but not two. She transported the brooch with frightening ease. Deciding to carry it in plain sight seemed the most logical disguise, and so Lara wore it on the front of her jumper, under her coat. She stole the items with surprising effortlessness. Covering her tracks seemed harder, but transporting the pin and manuscript was a complicated feat of ingenuity. The customs officer in Sydney noticed the brooch, catching sight of it as Lara leaned forward to stuff her passport back into the brown handbag slung across her body. “That’s stunning,” she gasped. “It must have cost you a fortune. Where did you get it?”

Lara smiled and brushed off the compliment. “It’s just costume jewellery. I got it from one of the cheap shops in Auckland.” Lara winced at her own lie, a complete betrayal of the priceless nature of the Māori taonga. Centuries old, it dripped with tribal history and mana. The customs officer nodded and shrugged and Lara worried for hours afterwards, waiting for the inevitable hand on her shoulder.

The manuscript was much harder to conceal. Lara couldn’t allow it to venture into the hold of the mighty plane. Too much could go wrong. It might get stolen or damaged and rendered worthless. Lara kept it in her carry-on bag, sealed inside a double layer of plastic oven bags to keep it apart from the other objects in her rucksack. The cover of the book, made from ancient swamp kauri, weighed her down and put her hand luggage overweight. But the attendant at the check-in desk smiled and waved her through to her gate. It took Lara a while to calm down once on the plane. She sweated in terror, which left her skin cold and tacky afterwards, but the shakes took longer to subside.

Having survived three unique customs checks on her trek home, Lara most feared those at Heathrow. They were no more thorough than their equivalents overseas, but once on the home strait, Lara expected fate to take an upper hand in her escape. Sod’s Law and the other helpful academics dictated it would all go hopelessly wrong at the last hurdle. It didn’t.

As Lara approached the penultimate gate to freedom with her heart pounding and her head struggling to stay clear and rational, she found the desk vacant. Nobody waited at Heathrow arrivals’ terminal to examine either her bags or her. Lara followed the signs for those with something to declare, her chest heaving and her gaze darting around her. She looked and felt like a criminal and waited for judgement. Someone would inspect her bags; that’s what happened at airports. Her aunt insisted she bring back some New Zealand chocolate laced with native fruit. That at least needed to be checked. But the final desk before freedom proved empty.

Obeying the signage with a shaking hand, Lara lifted the wall phone and a chirpy voice asked her, “Do you have something to declare, Madam?”

Lara’s brow furrowed as she named the chocolate and other food items Aunt Catharine demanded.

“Proceed to the exit, Madam, and welcome home,” came the distant voice through the telephone. Game on.

It was cold, wet and much too late for someone who hadn’t slept for just over thirty hours. Lara’s strength flagged as she wrapped the beautiful pin inside a muslin bag and reunited it with the manuscript. Aunt Catharine had a safe stored underneath the stairs in an invisible cupboard and Lara locked the items in the bowels of its metal stomach and clicked the door shut. She replaced the secret panel and stood up, dismayed to find the sense of her heavy burden remained.

Alone in the three-storey house on Nithsdale Avenue, the silence of a Market Harborough October night embraced her. It folded her in as though she’d done nothing more exciting than put out the rubbish. The occasional hiss of passing car tyres in the rain outside reduced her sense of isolation as she contemplated people returning home to the warm welcome of family or friends. She heard the sounds of their safe, guiltless lives going on outside in the street. She resisted engaging with them by watching through the window. “It’s better this way,” she sighed.

Aunt Catharine had met her at the little train station in Market Harborough in her ancient Ford Fiesta. Lara permitted herself a tight smile at the comforting sight of the familiar red vehicle. “Oh, I know, I know,” her aunt humphed. “Still hauling my sorry ass about town, poor old thing. But I’m hardly ever here, so there’s no point owning something expensive to sit in the garage, is there?”

Lara refused to comment or pass judgement on the sound but tired looking vehicle. She knew how it felt.

“I’ve done some shopping,” Catharine barked as Lara wheeled her suitcase towards the boot of the compact car. “You’ll have to shove your luggage in the back seat.”

Lara’s case perched behind the driver, nodding with precarious imbalance every time she steered around a corner almost on two wheels. The boot turned out to be crammed with food from the local supermarket.

“It’s all for you,” Lara’s aunt said as she slung the car into the garage at the back of the house. “I’m leaving in just under an hour. I thought you might be too tired to drive or shop and I’d got rid of everything ready to leave. Your phone call came as a surprise. Are you sure everything’s all right?”

Lara nodded, not wanting to reveal anything to the woman she adored most in the world. Even one small chink in her armour might cause everything to come tumbling out, and she couldn’t risk that. Catharine’s disgust terrified her, and it mattered what her aunt thought. It mattered even more what she might do about it.

As the taxi honked its horn in farewell and Lara closed the door behind her aunt’s departure, Lara rested her head against the cold, painted wood and sighed. Catharine thanked her for looking after her elderly cat and sparing the need for him to go into a cattery. Lara smiled and tried not to dwell on the irony. She had nowhere else to go. As Lara unloaded the groceries, Catharine spun her busy way towards Manchester Airport and a six-month secondment in New York. Too late, Lara remembered the chocolate in her suitcase. A quick text to her aunt netted the response, ‘It’s for the neighbour. He’ll be back on Monday.’

Lara sat on the stairs with a sheet of handwritten instructions in her lap, allowing a sense of relief to work its magic on the chemicals in her brain. Marble, the elderly tabby cat, had a full A4 sheet of directions that she should follow. Lara sighed as the words jumped around on the page. The family treasures, or taonga, snuggled together in the safe just a few feet away and her chest tightened in silent misery. Attempting to break their hold on her psyche, she wandered around the house exploring, poking, and prodding things with feigned interest.

Catharine didn’t go in much for pretentiousness and so Lara smiled to herself at a framed photograph of her aunt posing with Bill Gates. The photographer had snapped it at a glitzy celebration and she wore a long, shimmery silver dress. Her bright blue eyes, identical to Lara’s, possessed an iridescent quality and Catharine beamed into the camera lens, which was a rare occurrence. Her aunt appeared clipped and professional, highly organised, motivated and, to the continued surprise of many, unmarried. She seemed to have discovered the secret to happiness and fulfilment alone, didn’t suffer from loneliness or the lack of being part of a couple, and commanded a small entourage of devoted employees with admirable results.

“I should try it,” Lara sighed with sarcasm, catching sight of her dishevelled self in the full-length mirror near the window.

Apart from the blue eyes, Aunt Catharine looked as different from Lara as a bicycle from a bus. Lara’s genes commanded a delicate frame, but Catharine appeared solid and imposing. Lara’s father’s genes dictated darker skin for his daughter and the curly black hair everyone admired but wouldn’t want to own permanently. But Aunt Catharine was Lara’s lighthouse throughout most of her life, rescuing her when she needed it, as she did now.

With her habitual generosity, Catharine allocated Lara the enormous bedroom at the front of the house with the integral ensuite bathroom. Her aunt had owned the house for five years and knocked around the interior. The back of the floor resembled a hotel suite, with a large bedroom, walk-in wardrobe and ensuite. Catharine’s clothes still covered the double bed. It appeared she’d packed in a rush. Lara itched to tidy up the mess, but left it for another day. Would Catharine expect to find everything as she left it, albeit covered in a six-month layer of dust? Or would she hate the idea of Lara putting her undies and bra away for her? “I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” she told the curious cat who peeked out from under her aunt’s bed.

On the third floor was an attic bedroom, complete with its own ensuite. The abundance of ensuite almost made the family bathroom on the ground floor redundant, but the luxury of a large spa bath redeemed it. Tucked into the apex of the roof, the attic room gave the house its pointed appearance from the street. It disturbed the image of little sealed boxes sitting in a row for miles in either direction. Inside, the muted beige and brown decor gave the rooms a tasteful face. Lara had never visited this house. Catharine always travelled to see the struggling Lara, took her out for the day or invited her on holiday. It proved an unfamiliar experience to find herself on her aunt’s home turf.

Lara climbed into bed, gratified by the cat’s appearance. He pushed his scratchy way inside the bed covers with her. At least it wasn’t so lonely with him there, especially as he had such a noisy purr. “Just don’t die in the next six months,” Lara whispered to him. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

The old cat purred harder and dug his claws into her thigh as though trying to reassure her he possessed a substantial grip on life. Despite the pristine condition of the house, everything seemed small and old after the expansiveness of New Zealand. The roads were narrow and impossible to negotiate, and Lara’s heart quickened at the thought of hurling the Fiesta around town. The house towered above the street, joined to others on either side in an interminable row of buildings in never ending perpendicular streets. Already the greyness of the cloudy skies into which her plane descended filled Lara with a sense of entrapment. She missed the giant blue New Zealand sky.

As she drifted off to sleep, muttering and twitching in her distress, Marble watched her through a chink in the covers with his one good eye. In her exhaustion, Lara misread the feeding instructions for the wily old moggy and one teaspoon of meat had translated into one tablespoon. He licked his paw and then stretched out against the newcomer and hoped she’d memorised the instructions, so she need never read them again.

Chapter Two

Lara slept for twelve hours straight, waking up just before midday. She lay still for a while, trying to ignore the increasing urge to visit the bathroom. Half an hour later, she dragged herself down to the long galley kitchen, nosing in the fridge for something quick to eat. Marble appeared through the cat flap and wound himself around Lara’s legs, purring his affection for his alternative food source.

“Fine!” Her fraying nerves snapped. After he legged her up twice, Lara resorted to scraping the awful tinned meat into his bowl. “Stay there and eat that. But gulp it fast. It stinks.”

She’d intended to keep him isolated in one spot, and it worked for as long as his furry face remained pushed into his food bowl. Then he occupied himself with a thorough wash, involving every tufty part of him. Lara poured herself a bowl of cereal, drowned it in milk and devoured it, satiating her starvation after her coma-like-sleep.

A knock on the front door a few hours later found her dressed and attempting to stuff her clothes into the drawers in her borrowed bedroom. The woman on the doorstep waited with patience as Lara hauled the door open and then grappled to retrieve the newspaper and envelopes which prevented its progress. Standing up too fast, Lara gasped as the world swam before her eyes. Her embarrassed pink cheeks faded to a sickly grey, and the visitor frowned in concern. “Sorry, sorry,” Lara said, waving her free hand whilst her other one kept the myriad envelopes sealed in a death grip. “I stood up too fast. It’s the jetlag. I forgot post came through the front door and not into a post box on the street.”

The woman ventured into the hallway and took hold of Lara’s arm. “Do you think you’re going to faint?” she asked and Lara shook her head, determined not to make any more of an idiot of herself than she already had.

“I’m Kerry,” the woman said. She offered her handshake despite the awkwardness of their proximity in the narrow hallway. “I live next door.”

Lara smiled and prepared to offer her own name, but the guest waved her hand in dismissal. “Catharine asked me to check on you, just for the first few days, anyway. She thought you might like some help to find your way around Harborough. Said she felt disappointed that she wouldn’t get to spend any time with you, but I don’t mind showing you round when you’re ready.”

Lara liked her no-nonsense manner. With blonde hair folded into a messy bun, Kerry stood a head taller than Lara. Her open comportment gave her an instant appeal. Aged somewhere in her early thirties, Kerry dressed in a mixture of casual and formal attire. An unmistakable handprint in yellow paint marked the hem of her long grey skirt.

Lara closed the front door and her legs shook as she made her way along the hallway to the dining room and into the galley kitchen beyond it. Kerry slipped off her winter boots and followed, seeming at ease in the house. She pulled out one of the dining chairs and slumped into it with a sigh. “Oh great!” she groaned, as the yellow handprint revealed itself when she crossed her legs. “I hate art.”

Lara looked across at her in amusement as she flicked the switch to boil the kettle. She reached beneath the sink for a packet of cleaning wipes she’d found earlier when searching for the washing up liquid. As Aunt Catharine’s old chintz teapot nestled on its trivet in the centre of the table to brew the tea, Lara rounded up cups, milk jug and sugar. Then she plonked her bottom into a seat opposite her guest.

Kerry continued to mop at the paint stain, while Lara fiddled around with the drinks. But the visitor studied the pretty brunette from beneath her eyelashes. “I thought you’d look like Catharine,” she commented. She eyed Lara’s long dark hair, which curled at will and framed her delicate face. Strands wriggled free and hung over her shoulders as though artfully arranged. “You’re very tanned,” Kerry continued. “I can tell you just left a New Zealand summer. Half your luck.” She smiled at Lara and wrinkled her nose.

Dark lashes framed Lara’s blue eyes, and she returned the smile. Her awkwardness and lack of confidence didn’t fit with the image which Catharine painted of the globe-trotting archivist. “What day is it?” Lara asked, wincing at the strangeness of her question. “Sorry, jetlag. Again.”

Kerry rose and dumped the cleaning wipe in the bin beneath the sink before answering. The handprint had morphed into a dirty yellow smudge around the bottom of her skirt. It appeared bigger, although a little faded. “Friday,” she replied. “It’s hard when you’ve crossed time zones, isn’t it?”

Lara nodded and then remembered something. “Oh, Aunt Catharine asked me to fetch some chocolate and stuff from New Zealand for a neighbour. Is that you? I’ll just nip upstairs and fetch it.”

Kerry shook her head. “Not me. I’m allergic to dairy products. It might be the guy who lives on the other side of you. His accent might have a New Zealand twang. He’s grumpy though, so I’d stay out of his way.”

Oh great! Lara thought. Now I have to take chocolate to a grumpy old man.

Lara silenced, contemplating leaving the gifts for Catharine to deliver. It seemed unkind to leave them in the wardrobe for six months. She sighed, contemplating adding it to the various worries on her pile. They seemed myriad and plentiful.

“What were you doing in New Zealand?” Kerry asked. Lara rubbed her eyes, reluctant to speak about the last two years of wasted time. Kerry’s expectant expression offered no opportunity for her to avoid the subject.

“I took a job cataloguing and restoring a collection of Māori artifacts for the most gorgeous old gentleman. He wanted to keep them for his family, to pass down the generations. It was a neat job, and I loved it.”

“Was it temporary?” Kerry asked, pushing for more.

Lara nodded. “A year’s contract at first, but then he extended it as we hadn’t quite finished.” Lara pressed her fingers into the corners of her eyes. She didn’t want to think about Hone, about his gentle hazel eyes and gnarled olive hands, recounting the history of each object for her to record. His passion for his legacy had been pure and heartfelt. He loved his whanau, his family, and wanted his descendants to share in its rich tapestry. Lara hadn’t realised she was crying until the hot wet tears sprinkled onto her face and then she felt mortified, dashing them from her cheeks and hoping no one saw them. Kerry pretended to examine the mess on her skirt, unsure what to do for the best.

Lara went into the kitchen for some kitchen roll and collected herself while she hunted in the pantry for biscuits. Then she came back to the table as though nothing had happened. “What do you do for a job?” she asked Kerry, keen to switch the attention away from herself.