There's a pause. I think he might be laughing. Yeah. There it is. The inhale followed by those short little exhales. He’s laughing. This is definitely time to cut the call. On a high note. Well, sort of. I’m still bloody broke.
Thor
Bryn hangs up the phone. He is smirking, and not because he wants to. I heard the conversation. The girl is relentless. “We are in real trouble here. And she is in…” He lets out a long exhale. “We’ve got to catch her.”
“How do we do that? I can’t sense the hammer right now, and we can’t call the police. Best I can think of is to wait until I feel the hammer again. And by the time that happens…”
“Talk to her next time she calls. Not about the hammer. Or, hell. Tell her we’re going to give her the money. We’ll trap her.”
“I think she’s smart enough to evade a trap.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. She’s greedy. Greedy trumps smart at least fifty percent of the time.”
Ring Ring! The phone is going again.
“Right on cue,” Bryn says. He's pleased to have predicted her impatience. I’m not so thrilled.
I answer. No pleasantries. “We’ll give you a thousand pounds,” I say. “That’s all we have to spare, and it’s more than you deserve. Bring the hammer to the front of the abbey at midnight.”
“Absolutely not. We’ll do it in Direford. In the park. By the war memorial. At three pm today.”
She’s a cocky little thing. She doesn’t skip a beat while trying to brazenly rip me off. She seems unable to feel shame, and that's concerning for a whole host of reasons.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why? Because you can’t rip me off in the park in front of everybody?”
“Because two priests handing over a thousand pounds is going to draw attention.”
“I’m not asking you to stick it in my g-string. Put it in an envelope. I’ll bring the hammer in a bag. We do the switch on the park bench. Easy. Nobody gets hurt.”
“How do we know you’re giving us the real hammer? How do you know we’re giving you real cash? We need to be somewhere we can each inspect the goods. At the abbey. Tonight.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you want the money or not?”
“I don't know. Do I want the money? What is money? And is a thousand pounds enough, really? All this risk you’re asking me to take, the obvious chance of a double cross. Let me think about it. I’ll call you back. You’ll still be on this number? ’Course you will be.”
The line goes dead again. She’s gone. Out of my influence. With my bloody hammer. I am torn between cold rage enough to destroy the entire village of Direview or admiring her nerve.
“She,” Bryn points at the phone, “is fucking with us.”
“Why? She wants her money.”
“Or she wants something even harder to come by these days,” he suggests.
“What’s that?”
“Trouble.”
“Oh, she’s found plenty of that. I vow that.”
5
Thor
We are waiting by the abbey gates in the moonlight. It is late, almost midnight, and a summer breeze plays across the valley. It would almost be romantic if Bryn weren't here, and if I wasn’t about to steal my recalcitrant hammer back from the wretch who dared cross me.
“She's not coming, is she?”
“She’ll be here.” Bryn is so confident, as if he knows something I don’t. That is just the way he speaks, however. It's one of his many qualities that make him suited to leadership. No matter how bad things get, Bryn always sounds like he knows what’s going on. And has wisdom to impart.
“Remember, no matter how much you want to beat her, you cannot lay a finger on her. She's not one of us. She’s a civilian, as it were. And we don't know who she is, or who she is connected to. Which means if you assault her, you're inviting legal scrutiny of the kind we literally cannot afford.”
“So when you whip your wife…”
“I don’t whip my wife.”
"You know what I mean. You punished her several times before you were married.”
“That was different for a whole host of reasons. This is a local stranger. We cannot antagonize the locals. We exist here in plain sight. We have to maintain a veneer of respectability. So curb your impulses, Thor. After tonight, she will be banished from the grounds. You will not see her again. Ever.”
Something in me instinctively rebels against that sentiment, but I do not argue. Bryn may speak like he is the boss, but in truth we are equals and he has no right to tell me what I can and cannot do.
“Hello, boys!”
She's come, clad in darkness like the night. It’s just a hoodie and black jeans, but she’d make anything look mysterious. There is something of the witch about this young woman, both in attitude and temperament.