Newton’s Fire. Will Adams

Croke had that effect on him. ‘We’re outside the girl’s place now,’ he finished. ‘But there are curtains twitching everywhere.’

      ‘I don’t believe this,’ said Croke acidly. ‘I ask you to buy me some papers, and instead I get arson and a dead woman. And now you’re worried about curtains?’

      ‘We work for one of your companies, sir. If we’re arrested, it’ll lead the police straight back to you. I wanted to make absolutely sure you think it’s worth the risk.’

      Silence. ‘Okay,’ said Croke finally. ‘Stay where you are. I’ll see what I can arrange.’

      II

      Pelham scrolled for a number then jammed his phone between shoulder and ear. ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he said. ‘It’s me. Yeah. Listen, that friend of yours at Caius. Sonia, isn’t it? You couldn’t give her a call for me, could you? Brilliant. I need to get hold of a girl there. Rachel something …’ He glanced across at Luke for a prompt.

      ‘Rachel Parkes,’ said Luke.

      ‘Rachel Parkes,’ relayed Pelham. He listened a moment, laughed loudly. ‘No. Nothing like that, I promise. A favour for a mate.’ He laughed again. ‘What do you mean? I’ve got plenty of mates. I just won’t introduce you or you’ll run off with one of them.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, anything you can get. Mobile, home phone, address, whatever. Thanks, sweetheart. Love you.’ He killed the call, turned to Luke. ‘Miriam,’ he said. ‘I think she might be the one.’

      ‘You always think they might be the one.’

      ‘Keeps the heart young, falling in love. Try it yourself sometime.’

      ‘Maybe next week. This week I’m focusing on staying alive.’

      ‘You’ll need something to write on when she calls back.’ He gestured at his glove compartment. ‘Have a rootle around in there.’

      ‘Jesus, mate,’ said Luke, as he precipitated a small avalanche of candy bars and boiled sweets.

      ‘Better give me one of those,’ said Pelham. ‘Wouldn’t want to faint from sugar deficiency; not with all these telephone poles around.’

      ‘Was that when the last one attacked?’ asked Luke, finding himself a stubby pencil and a notepad. ‘While you were feeding?’

      ‘What are you? A claims adjuster?’ He tore the wrapper off one with his teeth, stuffed the molten mess inside into his mouth. He was still chewing when his phone rang, had to give himself a couple of moments to swallow it away. ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Any joy?’ He listened a moment, grinned. ‘You’re a star.’ He called out phone numbers and an address for Luke to jot down. ‘Thanks, gorgeous,’ he said. ‘And we’re still on for tomorrow, yeah? Great. Then take care, now.’ He ended the call and handed Luke his phone so that he could try the various numbers. Without success. ‘Do you want to go sit outside her place?’ asked Pelham. ‘You can’t consider yourself a proper stalker until you’ve done that.’

      ‘How far is it?’

      Pelham turned on his GPS, typed in her address. ‘Other side of town,’ he said. ‘Twenty minutes or so.’ He gave Luke a pointed look. ‘Just about long enough for you to tell me what the fuck’s going on.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ said Luke. He took a moment to order his thoughts. ‘Remember that business with the Uni?’

      Pelham nodded soberly. ‘Of course.’

      ‘I tried to get myself another job, but I was way too toxic. It was clearly going to be a year or two before the whole thing died down, so I decided to make a virtue of necessity, write my book. I’d been talking about it long enough.’

      ‘Telling me.’

      ‘I had some savings, but it was still going to be pretty tight, you know; so I put the word out that if there was any work—’

      ‘I asked around,’ said Pelham. ‘I swear I did. But you know how things are.’

      ‘I wasn’t having a go. I’m just explaining the background. Because around last Christmas this guy rings out of the blue. He tells me his name is Steven, though I doubt now that it really was. He says that he’s a lawyer and that he’s got a possible job for me. One of his clients is apparently a Newton obsessive.’

      ‘You should get on famously, then.’

      ‘This client had commissioned him to track down all of Newton’s papers still missing from the Sotheby’s auction. You know about that, right?’

      ‘Do I?’ asked Pelham. He pulled up at a set of lights, indicated to turn left. ‘Tell you what: why don’t you give me the refresher?’

      III

      Richard Morgenstern sounded young, enthusiastic, and distinctly Texan. ‘Great to hear from you, sir,’ he boomed, when Croke called him. ‘ I’m on my way to City Airport now. You’re not there already, are you?’

      ‘No. But I need something done and I hoped you’d be able to help.’

      ‘If I can, I will. Anything for a man like you.’

      ‘A man like me?’

      ‘A friend of hers. She called me herself, you know? I mean, hell, I saw her a few times during the campaign, and once at the Academy. But I never spoke to her before. And she wasn’t my Commander-in-Chief then. It’s not the same, is it?’

      ‘No. I guess not.’

      ‘You know what she told me? She told me this is her number one priority right now. She said this trumps everything.’ He laughed a little giddily, as though he still couldn’t quite believe it. ‘So tell me what you need. If it’s in my power—’

      ‘There’s an email that could be problematic,’ said Croke. ‘I need it deleted.’

      ‘Civilian or government.’

      ‘Civilian.’

      ‘Hell,’ said Morgenstern. ‘It would be. Reading an email’s easy. We get copies of everything sent anywhere. But deleting one is hard. The service providers can be real assholes. They like evidence of threat or wrongdoing. They like warrants. Can we take this to the courts?’

      ‘No,’ said Croke.

      ‘Then I don’t know what to suggest.’

      ‘How about the police?’ asked Croke. ‘Will they do what you ask without going to a judge?’ He outlined his idea.

      Morgenstern laughed. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll get on to it now. I’ll call back if I have any trouble; otherwise you can assume it’s taken care of, and I’ll see you on the ground in thirty.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Croke. ‘I’ll let my people know to expect company.’

      NINE

      I

      It wasn’t easy, giving an abbreviated history of the Newton papers. Luke had to start way back. ‘Okay,’ he told Pelham. ‘Newton never married or had children, so he left all his papers to his niece Catherine. Her daughter married into the Portsmouth family, who offered them to Cambridge University back in the 1870s. Cambridge only wanted the scientific ones, so the rest were eventually auctioned off by Sotheby’s in 1936. Sotheby’s kept a record of who bought every lot. Most of the buyers were well-known dealers, but there were some private collectors too. The economist John Maynard Keynes bought a huge number of the alchemical lots; and a Sephardic Jew called Yahuda bought a bunch of theological papers that were later used to support the case