Page 25 of Tattered Huntress
None of the men had looked in my direction; they still hadn’t realised I was there. I made a quick decision.
Skirting around the park railings, I entered through a small gate on the opposite side to where they were standing. Less than a minute later, I was skulking behind a large oak tree and straining my ears. Hester was right – I wanted to win. And was it underhand to eavesdrop on their conversation? After all, they were standing in the open to have a tactical discussion. What did they expect?
Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the discussion wasn’t going well. ‘That road didn’t exist in the eighteenthcentury, you plonker!’ one of them protested. ‘There’s no point going that way.’
The man nearest me ground his teeth so vigorously that I heard them crunching. ‘We have to go somewhere! We know it’s not in the city, it’s somewhere to the north. There are several locations along that road where it might be hidden.’
A third man piped up; despite his thick muscles and height, he had a high-pitched voice that sounded cartoonish. ‘Pemberville went that way. We should have followed him when we had the chance.’
‘Come on, John. You saw the way his team was moving. They don’t have an exact location either. We won’t find the key part first if all we do is follow other people around. We have to be smarter than that.’
‘Then where the fuck do we go, Boris? Where do we start?’
I didn’t wait to hear what Boris thought. It was obvious that the four men in black, for all their sleek communication technology, didn’t have a clue what they were doing or where they were going. If nobody else knew exactly where to look, then I still had as good a chance as anyone of finding the first part of the key.
I slipped away before they noticed me. They’d been right about one thing: following other people around wasn’t the way to success. I had to forge my own route.
I wasn’t like them – and I certainly wasn’t like Hugo Pemberville. I wasn’t a connected high elf and I didn’t even own a car. But I wasn’t without resources. Less than twenty minutes after I’d nipped away from their argumentative huddle, I walked into the Derbyshire franchise of Swift Delivery Services.
I ordered the brownies to stay out of the way; delivery drivers were almost exclusively human and I didn’t want my tiny companions to scare them off.
It was surprising how similar the warehouse was to the onein Edinburgh – they could have been carbon copies of each other. As soon as I strolled through the main doors, I knew exactly where to find the manager’s office, though I couldn’t risk talking to anyone in management. If I did, they’d probably contact Mr McIlvanney and I was pretty certain he’d tell them to steer clear of a dangerous junkie like me. However, not everyone at SDS would be a slave to the system; life didn’t work that way. All I had to do was find the right person.
With that thought in mind, I gave the offices a wide berth and made a beeline for the staffroom towards the rear of the warehouse next to the battered vending machine. If the Derbyshire franchise kept to the same timescale as the one in Edinburgh, the evening shift was only just starting. When I heard the murmur of voices from inside the staffroom, I smiled; some drivers hadn’t set off yet. I wasn’t too late.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside. Three faces turned towards me – two women and a man all wearing SDS uniforms. I grinned and waved. Confidence was key here; I couldn’t afford to appear awkward. ‘Hi, there! My name is Daisy. I worked for SDS in Edinburgh.’
All three of them smiled at me. Good. They were friendly.
‘I’m Jamila,’ the older woman told me.
‘Anne,’ said the other woman.
‘And I’m Mark.’ He stood up briefly to shake my hand. ‘You’ve transferred here?’
‘Nope.’ I sat down on the chair next to him. ‘I’m here because I need some help and I reckoned that you guys might be the ones to ask.’ I didn’t try to tell them that we were all part of the same team or fall at their feet with a sob story; if this lot were like my ex-colleagues, they’d prefer straight-talking.
Mark’s expression suddenly looked wary but Jamila and Anne appeared intrigued so I focused on them. ‘I’m taking part in a treasure hunt. It’s a competition and I’m losing.’
Anne snapped her fingers in delight. ‘I told you, Jamila! I knew that was Hugo Pemberville I saw in the street!’
I told my face to continue smiling despite my irritation at his name continually cropping up no matter where I happened to be. ‘I’m trying to beat him,’ I said. ‘And a bunch of others. I only managed to snag my way into the competition by chance because of my deliveries near Edinburgh, so I know that drivers like us have bags of local knowledge. I’m taking a punt and hoping you can help me with a clue.’
‘This is so exciting! What’s the clue?’ Anne demanded.
Emboldened by her enthusiasm, I leaned forward. ‘I’m looking for someone called Doctor Talbot. I know he’s been dead for hundreds of years so?—’
I didn’t need to finish my sentence. The three of them replied in chorus, ‘Doctor’s Gate.’
Bingo. I sat up straighter. ‘What’s Doctor’s Gate?’
‘It’s not a gate, it’s actually an old road that’s been around since Roman times. You can’t drive along it but you can walk most of it. It goes from Glossop to Brough-on-Noe. Some old folks still call it Doctor Talbot’s Gate because he was responsible for improving the road in the fifteenth century.’
So Doctor Talbot was considerably more dead than the Jacobites were. I hoped that meant the other teams hadn’t learned of his existence yet – or of this old road. A thrilling fizz ran through my veins; it was almost as satisfying as a double helping of spider’s silk.
Jamila read my expression. ‘I wouldn’t get too excited. It’s got to be fifteen miles long. If you’re looking for buried treasure, that’s a lot of distance to cover.’
Her caution didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. I already knew a lot more than I had five minutes earlier. There had to be some sort of landmark that would lead me to the treasure because the Jacobite who’d buried it would have neededsomething to guide him back to it. It wasn’t as if he could have used sat-nav.
