Vengeance Child (32 page)

Victor paused. ‘Who is it?'

‘A woman. That's all I could make out. Please, Victor, Archer's so vulnerable. If we don't get him out the shock alone could kill him.'

‘And my sister is in a coma. I'm deep into second stage. Sometimes it's hard to remember even my name. Islanders are dying. Jay is probably already planning to inflict even worse carnage on human beings. What if he decides he can get inside the heads of nuclear technicians and make them detonate a nuclear reactor? Or tricks the army into releasing nerve gas?'

‘Archer's a little boy. It will only take a few minutes.' She explained what she'd found emerging from the wall.

Victor inhaled deeply. ‘OK. I'm pretty sure I know where he is. It's the old smugglers' vaults.' He hurried toward the castle gates. ‘Until a few years ago they were used to store maintenance equipment. Then the structure was declared unstable so the castle's trustees had the place bricked up.'

‘Victor, it's no good going that way,' Laura told him. ‘The gates are locked.'

‘OK, there's a side door that—'

‘Locked.'

‘It's never locked.'

‘It is now. I've tried it.'

‘Damnation. No doubt another of Jay's tricks.'

‘Victor. Keep a grip.'

‘I'm fine. And I know what Solomon told us is true. And that's no delusion on my part. Jay is a vengeance weapon. One that I'm going to stop – or die trying.'

‘Where are you going?'

Victor nodded at a tree that grew close to the wall. ‘If the gates are locked there's only one way in.'

‘You're joking.' Laura watched as the tree whipped around in the storm. Its branches beat at the battlements as if furious at the castle's temerity to dominate the island.

Victor gave a bleak smile. ‘Right at this moment I can't see myself joking ever again.' He nodded upwards. ‘Use only the branches I use. Stay as close to the trunk as you can. And don't, whatever happens, look down.'

Forty-Three

Victor climbed the tree. At that moment it seemed more animal than plant. Storm-winds made it buck as if it tried to shake them off. Twigs whipped his face. Branches flapped wildly. Leaves, torn away by blasts of cold air, stung his face. Despite his warning to Laura not to look down he shot glances back at her as she climbed those dripping branches. The rain made them dangerously slick. What was more, he expected Jay to manifest himself at the bottom of the trunk. If Laura saw him standing there, mouthing her name, would that be enough to topple her into a bone-breaking fall?

As he inched along one of the bucking limbs to the battlements he also expected to see Ghorlan down in the courtyard of the castle. That image of her as she hurried to meet a man stayed with him. He couldn't stop himself imagining what happened to his wife after that. Perhaps she'd rushed down to the beach to meet the mystery man there? A little while after that she'd gone into the water. Maybe she'd used the boulders as stepping stones to reach the next bay, then slipped off them into the river. But how did that explain the position of her green island ranger fleece? Victor had found it above the high tide mark. Possibly, as Victor had done in the past, she'd left it there to wade into the river to save one of the Saban Deer that had become entangled in discarded wire. Then she'd lost her footing. The currents could be brutal.

‘Victor!' Laura had reached the stonework, too, but still remained on the branch because he'd not lowered himself over the battlement on to the walkway. ‘Snap out of it. Let me on to the wall!'

As he clambered down on to the walkway he realized that those symptoms had struck again. His mind had wandered. Lately, it had become so difficult to keep a grip on his thoughts. With that, came a creeping lethargy. It would be so good to lie down now.

‘Victor! Let me get on to the wall . . . I can't hold on.'

Savage gusts wrenched at the branch. The entire section of tree moved away from the castle so it no longer touched the masonry. Below Laura, a long drop to solid earth. Victor hurled himself, so his upper-half stretched out over the top of the wall.

‘Grab my hands,' he shouted as the woman receded through a fog of driving rain. At that moment it seemed as if the storm was determined to catapult her from the tree.

Laura let go of the branch before running along a lower one as if it were a tightrope. Then she leapt at the wall. Victor grabbed her hands. Rainwater had made one so slippery it shot through his fingers as if it were wet soap. Desperately, he grabbed her wrist.

‘I've got you,' he panted. ‘I won't let you fall.'

Her eyes met his; they signalled absolute trust.

‘OK, when I pull you to the rim of the wall, get one of your arms round the back of my neck. Then I'll haul you over. One, two, three.'

The top of the battlement reached shoulder height from the walkway. So when he dragged her over the rough stones it must have been painful. Yet she didn't so much as murmur as he hauled her to safety. What was more, she didn't pause to catch breath. Instead, she ran for the steps that led down the inside of the walls to the yard.

‘How do we get into the vault?'

‘It's not that straightforward. The only doorway was bricked up the same time as the archway outside.'

‘So how did Archer get down there?'

‘I guess that's a mystery he can explain when we've freed him.' He pointed to the groundskeeper's cabin. ‘There are tools in there; we'll have to break him out.'

Now they could barely see it was so dark. It took precious moments for Victor to find a piece of masonry that he could use to break a window, then undo the latch to the door. Once inside he could flick on the yard floodlights as well as the light in the cabin. In one corner stood a desk covered with paper coffee cups. At the other side of the room were shelves on which there were power tools, boxes of light bulbs and jars of nails.

Victor selected a couple of lamps that were powered by bottled gas. ‘These will give us the best light once we get into the vault.' Quickly, he lit the pair.

‘How are you feeling now?'

‘If I keep busy I'm sure I can keep all the little grey cells together.' He shot her a smile. ‘But if I seem to drift away into my own world again jab me with something sharp. OK?'

‘OK.'

Victor handed her a steel bar. ‘For jimmying. I'll take this.' He chose a huge hammer with a handle a full three feet long. After that he took a gas lamp, which cast a brilliant white light around the room. Laura held the other. ‘Can you feel it, or is it just me?'

Her eyes were grave. ‘A sense that time is running out?'

He nodded. ‘It's like watching the clock on a time bomb tick down to zero. I can feel the air's different, even the ground is changing. I thought it was part of the second-stage symptoms, but now I'm certain that Jay is transforming the molecules – the very atoms that everything is made of. Back there in the forest I thought the trees would turn into animals.'

She poked his arm with the steel bar. ‘Stay focused, soldier.' Her smile was a dry one. ‘There's work to be done.'

Victor led the way to a section of inner wall that clearly revealed an area of new brickwork in the shape of a door. Savagely, he attacked it with a hammer.

‘Watch your eyes,' he shouted as sparks fired off in every direction.

The concussions were explosive. He noticed that Laura also covered her ears as well as turning her head at an angle to avoid exposing her eyes to shards of brick that shot into the air every time the steel hammer head struck. He worked oblivious to the rain streaming down. For now, he even put aside the memory of Ghorlan rushing to meet a mystery man. Another crash of the hammer knocked a brick inward. From the oblong void the smell of decay oozed. Victor pounded the hammer home again. A brick shattered. He aimed another huge blow at the barrier.

‘Stop!'

Laura put her hand on the wall, just where Victor intended to land the next strike. In the nick of time he pulled the hammer back before the block of steel smashed her fingers to pulp.

‘Victor, it's Archer!'

When Victor raised the gas lamp to the small hole he'd made he saw a pair of wide eyes staring out.

‘Archer, we'll have you out in a minute. Stand right back while Victor takes down the wall. Put your hands over your eyes so no sharp bits hurt them.'

Archer continued to stare out with frightened eyes.

‘Please,' Laura said gently. ‘Move back from the wall.'

Archer cried, ‘No. I've got to give Victor this.' He pushed his bunched fist through the narrow void in the brickwork.

Victor put his own hand under Archer's as the boy opened his fingers. Glittering links fell into Victor's palm.

Victor reeled. At that moment he couldn't have been more shocked if the entire edifice of the castle had tumbled on top of him. He stared at the bracelet.

‘Victor. Keep holding it together. You're nearly through.'

‘My good God,' he breathed, then louder, ‘Archer, where did you find this?'

No reply, just a pair of eyes gleaming through the slot-shaped opening.

‘Archer. Did you find this on the beach?'

Then a choked reply. ‘From here. From the car. Lady gave it!'

Laura said soothingly, ‘Don't panic, we're nearly through. Victor, he's starting to go into shutdown. It's time we got him out of there. Victor? What's wrong?'

‘This.' He held the bracelet in a cupped hand. Raindrops sparkled on gold. ‘I don't understand where this came from. Archer, tell me exactly where you found this?'

‘Don't question him now, Victor. He's near to collapse.' She eyed him as if expecting him to flip out. ‘Why? What is it?'

Victor couldn't drag his gaze away from the delicate jewellery in his palm. ‘See what's engraved on the link?'

In the light of the gas lamp Laura read out the twin names. ‘Ghorlan. Victor.' She caught her breath. ‘It's your wife's . . . Victor, careful!'

He called through the tiny opening. ‘Archer, stand back.' A strength he'd never known before filled him. In five tremendous blows he felled the wall. Bricks cascaded to his feet. Red dust billowed up into the falling rain. Before the dust had cleared, they picked up the lanterns and rushed inside to find that Archer had already vanished.

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 . . .'