Forty-Four

What made Victor stop dead was the car. The old Ford saloon rested on the stone floor. Its tyres were flat. Pale deposits covered its metalwork. Cobwebs rippled in the draught. Fungus growths had erupted around one of the headlights. Meanwhile, tree roots that had broken through the earth banking, on which the castle walls stood, hung down with all the loathsome promise of probing tentacles from some subterranean monster.

Laura held up the lantern as she descended the steps to join him. Its searing light filled the vault. As well as the car a large amount of equipment had been abandoned here, apparently in a hurry. A lawnmower sat alongside one wall. There were boxes of tools. Leaning against one corner beneath the vaulted ceiling were a whole bunch of slender poles topped with brightly coloured pennants. Archer must have managed to push one of these through the ventilation hole to attract her attention. Indeed, the boy had piled plastic crates, one on top of the other, so he could reach the ventilation block. In the shadows she saw Archer, his eyes were dull; fear had driven the boy to hide inside himself.

Victor shook his head. ‘A lot of this equipment was in good order. Why brick it up in the vault? Especially the car. It’s not as if it had been a clapped-out wreck back then.’ He raised the lantern as he tried to see through the windows but they were covered with a white crust of salts that had drifted down from the ancient masonry above. He tried the handle of the front passenger door. The mechanism gave a grudging clump before the catch yielded to his pressure; door hinges squealed.

He glanced at Laura. ‘You’d think the builder would have asked someone to take the car and all this equipment out before sealing the entrances.’ From the vehicle came a smell that made him flinch. This was more than mustiness. Rot had set into the upholstery or something. With the door open he leaned in to inspect the dusty front seats. ‘Something got spilt here, but the car must have been in good shape when it was abandoned. Wait . . . there’s a pile of old blankets in the back . . . ugh, from the smell I guess the owner left their groceries in here.’ The lamplight was so intense in this confined space that he had to narrow his eyes to slits. He reached into the back then pulled back the blanket.

When he was aware of the world again he found himself standing ten paces from the car. Laura rested her hand on his arm.

At last he managed to say, ‘So that’s how Archer came by the bracelet.’ Dazed, he asked Laura, ‘Did you see . . . ?’ He nodded at the car.

Grim-faced, she whispered. ‘It’s Ghorlan, isn’t it?’

‘So she never went into the river. All that time I searched for her . . . when I visited the castle she was right beneath my feet . . . I had a dream; Jay wanted me to walk through the walls into here . . .’ Victor felt no emotion. Inside he felt dry; just an empty Hoover bag of a man. Nothing. Only vacuum. ‘Shouldn’t I be crying, Laura? Or screaming? I just feel empty. Hollow.’

‘That’s because you’re in shock.’

‘And we can’t even call the police. We might as well be on the moon.’ With an effort he recalled what he’d seen on the back seat of the car. It didn’t seem much of anything, really. A husk of a figure . . . or at least that’s what it had resembled. A shrivelled Egyptian mummy of a thing, only it wore Ghorlan’s clothes. He remembered those leather cowboy boots that she’d brought back from a trip to Wyoming. That’s before he’d met her. Lots of times he’d been jealous. He thought they’d been bought for her by a former boyfriend. So there she is now. All dried up. ‘Archer must have found the bracelet here. And did you notice her hair? It’s still beautiful. A kind of blue-black, the same as ravens’ feathers. The wedding ring’s on her finger . . .’ His voice grew hoarse. ‘But did you notice something else? There’s a cut above her eye. That’s her blood on the front seat, isn’t it? And even though her skin’s dried up now, like old newspaper, I could see dark marks on her neck. That’s bruising, isn’t it? She’d been strangled.’ He blinked. ‘Murder . . . not in a million years would I have thought murder. All this time I’d convinced myself she’d somehow slipped into the river, then been carried away. That seemed like a peaceful end. Drowning wouldn’t have hurt. But the thought of someone with their hands round her throat. Crushing . . .’

‘Victor.’ Laura touched his arm. ‘There’s something else. I found this between the passenger seat and the door.’ She held up an oblong box in black plastic.

‘Ghorlan’s voice recorder.’ After taking it from Laura he examined it. ‘Jay showed me Ghorlan putting this in her pocket the day she died. In fact, Jay repeatedly told me that past events aren’t always what they seem.’ He frowned. ‘It’s been left switched to record.’ He thumbed the play button. Nothing happened. The machine was dead, of course, the batteries would have become exhausted years ago. ‘So it might have been running when . . .’ He clenched the recording device in his fist. ‘And whoever did that to my wife also left her fleece on the beach to make it look as if she’d drowned.’ The ice in his blood became fire. ‘Whoever did this to her I’m going to find! They are going to wish they’d never been born!’

‘Victor.’ Laura spoke softly. ‘I’ll get you and Archer home.’

‘No.’ He heard the steel in his voice. ‘I’ve got to see this through. I’m in second stage. In a few hours I’ll be in a coma. Not long after that I might be dead. In the time I have left I’m going to move heaven and earth to find out who murdered my wife. Stay put.’

‘Victor, where are you going? I don’t want Archer to be down here a moment longer – Victor!’

He raced up the steps, then across the rubble of the wall he’d demolished. Rain beat down in the yard as he ran back to the groundskeeper’s cabin. There he ransacked the desk until he’d found what he was looking for. A moment later he returned to the vault. Laura stood with her arm round Archer. The light from her lantern revealed the entombed car in every detail. And entombed in that car the woman he’d married. At that instant, however, he felt no grief. A hunger for vengeance drove him. His mind had cleared. Exhaustion vanished from his limbs. Ghorlan’s killer would face his wrath.

He held up a blister pack. ‘Batteries,’ he announced.

‘Victor, should you be doing this?’

‘Like I said. I might be dead in a few hours.’ He held her gaze. ‘Will you help me, Laura?’

‘You know I will.’

‘Thank you. But first I’m going to find out who took her from me. Then if they’re on this island I’m going to rip them apart.’

He noticed the way that Laura looked at Archer. To see if Victor’s hate-filled words had impacted on the boy. But he’d retreated inside himself. He didn’t appear to see or hear anything.

Quickly, as if driven by a power from outside of himself, Victor snapped the batteries from the pack, slotted them into the voice recorder, then held it up. ‘Here goes,’ he said. ‘I hope to God it still works.’