He began tapping the floor with his boot to look for hollow points, but there was nothing. The only thing hidden under the chocolate woollen carpet was a concrete slab. The room was an open page.
To the best of his knowledge there was only one key in this room. He returned to the shelves and pulled out The Keys of Enoch.
Mel quickly found herself mesmerised by the cool silence of the evening. She detected no movement from the street or from the houses on either side of Paulson’s property. She gazed around his front yard, marvelling at the immaculate garden. Police tape was draped haphazardly at various points to indicate areas the detectives had deemed pertinent to their investigation.
She sat down on a wooden bench under a medium-sized desert oak near the front corner of the yard, unseen from the street thanks to the large wall around the perimeter of the house. It was a perfectly secluded corner from which she had no doubt the priest must have spent many hours contemplating the bigger picture. Through the lazy dance of the leaves she stared at the smudge of the Milky Way and the countless stars that lay within it. She became aware of how much the light of the town reduced her view of the night sky.
Star gazing was perhaps one thing that had been greatly improved by the end of the world. From the prison of her Gold Coast apartment, she had spent hours on end staring up into the pitch black, mesmerised by the eternity of outer space. She had come to believe that gazing at the stars and their clockwork precession across the night sky had helped keep her sane in the days and weeks after the cataclysm.
She tried to imagine the priest sitting here doing the same and for a fleeting moment thought she heard a man speaking. She gazed around anxiously. There was no-one in the yard.
An echo of the past, perhaps, or a memory she had tuned into. She didn’t catch what was said.
An ornamental plant caught her eye. It reminded her of a chess piece. A pawn. How apt.
More voices – this time from next door. A light was switched on at a window from which the neighbours could stare down into Paulson’s lush garden. She hoped Luckman was keeping out of sight. She thought she detected a peevish tone to their voices. Perhaps they had heard something.
She moved as quietly as she could toward their window. But just as she drew level with the priest’s front step, the door whipped open. Luckman whistled at her softly. She stifled a yelp of fright.
He waved her inside. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “The neighbours are restless.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He closed the door behind her and led the way to the study.
Dozens of books were stacked in several piles on the floor.
“This your handiwork?” she asked him.
“I’ll get to that.”
He handed her the notebook on which John Cutler’s name was scribbled like some handwritten mantra.
“What do you make of this?”
As soon as she touched the pad she knew.
“It’s the priest’s handwriting. It was worrying him – something about this man, a meeting perhaps. There’s anger and fear mixed together. Whoever John Cutler is, Father Paulson didn’t like him.”
She turned to the mess on the floor. “So what are you looking for?”
“A safe. But it seems to be well hidden.”
“You think it’s built into the bookcase?”
He shrugged. “I’m flying blind here.”
Mel noticed a small plinth had been built into the end of the bookcase in one corner of the room. There was a chess set on top of it. She tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t move.
“That’s strange. You can’t move this board, but it’s not exactly a convenient place to stand and play chess.”
He stared at her, and then the chess board. She was right. It was a pointless affectation in a room that was otherwise clinically plain.
“It could be some kind of trigger,” he mused. “If so it’d have to be magnetic. You’d need to make the right move.”
Luckman picked up a chess piece and placed it in the middle of the chess board. Nothing happened.
“This could take a while,” he decided.
“Maybe not,” Mel whispered. She pulled Better Chess for Average Players off a nearby shelf, placed its spine on Paulson’s desk and allowed the book to fall open.
“If a certain page is opened frequently a book spine will often open at that place,” she explained.
It opened at pages 28-29, on which there were five illustrated chess moves.
“OK, so which one?” Luckman asked her.
“That one,” she decided, pointing. “It’s the only move that doesn’t require a massive reordering of the pieces.”
The illustration showed most of the pieces in starting order – only two white pawns were in play.
“Your move,” he told her.
She smiled, moving the two white pawns on Paulson’s board into the positions that matched the diagram.
But nothing happened.
“Oh,” she sighed, disappointed. “So much for that idea.”
“Wait.” He stared at the diagram, back at the chess board, then back at the book. “You haven’t finished.”
“Yes I have,” she insisted.
“No – look more carefully. Two pieces are missing.”
“Oh my God, you’re right.”
A white knight and a black knight were absent from the board. As she removed them they heard a click inside the wall. Adjacent to the chess board, a hook on a round brass plate – seemingly attached to the wall near the corner of the room – swung open to reveal an electronic keypad.
He was about to laugh in triumph when they both heard a car pulling up out front. Luckman popped his head into the hallway and caught a glimpse of headlights on the ceiling through the front windows. Someone had just parked on Paulson’s driveway.
“We have visitors,” he whispered to her. “Stay here.” He slipped into the hallway to steal a look from the front of the house. The neighbours had phoned the police. Paulson’s front gate was sliding open. Luckman saw a uniformed officer emerge from the driver’s side of the police car. Detective Pollock climbed gingerly to his feet from the passenger side.
Thirty
“How long do we have?” she asked.
“A minute, maybe less.”
Mel picked up the chess book and placed it back on the shelf to cover their tracks. “Any bold ideas on the combination?” she asked anxiously.
“We’ve got maybe three goes at it,” he told her. “After that, any system this sophisticated will most likely lock us out and sound an alarm.”
His mind was racing. It would be far safer to simply get out while they still had the chance. He closed the door to the study. There was no lock on the door. The window was the only other way out. They might just be able to grab the safe’s contents and make a break for it. He didn’t want to have to do this a second time.
“Mel, open the window,” he whispered. “Quietly.”
Luckman reached for The Keys of Enoch. The first key was numbered 101. He gave it a try.
Nothing.
He cursed under his breath.
“Alpha and Omega,” Mel whispered.
“What?”
“I dunno – the words just popped into my head.”
“First and last,” he realised.
Luckman could hear the cops rattling keys. They would be inside in about 20 seconds. If Pollock found them now they might never get another shot at this. Luckman flicked to the back of The Keys of Enoch for the number sequence of the final key. He added first and last together and typed in the six-digit sequence. As he did so they heard the front door open.