In the Blood (51 page)

Amy screamed his name.
 
“Gabriel!”

Tayte saw her fall back into the water.
 
He rushed in, lifting her head above the rising tide.
 
She spluttered, coughing up sea-water, thrashing in Tayte’s arms.

“Hey!
 
It’s JT!”
 
He slipped his jacket off and pushed her arms into the sleeves, holding her head steady as he locked eyes.
 
“Amy?”
 
He tapped her cheeks.
 
They felt ice cold.
 
He cupped her face between his palms and rubbed them.
 
“Amy, it’s me.”

Amy’s brow furrowed.
 
Then Tayte caught the faintest trace of a smile, and beyond his hopes, Amy spoke.

“Thank you,” she said, her words shivering slowly free.

Tayte returned the smile as eagerly as he knew how.
 
“Let’s get you out of here.”
 
He was already trying to carry her to the cave entrance, but something still restricted her.

“Chains,” Amy said.

Tayte shone the dive lamp behind her and saw the rusty quarter-inch link chain around her waist.
 
In the lamplight he could see that it was cinched tight, secured by a heavy padlock that looked new.
 
From the shackle he followed another length of chain that led away to either side of the rock.

“Stay with me, Amy!” he said.

He could see that she was struggling to remain conscious and it was clear that she was as much in danger of hypothermia now as she was from drowning.
 
He propped her up against the rock, as high as the chains would allow, tilting her head back to keep her airway clear.
 
Then he followed the chain further into the cave.

Rust had stained the granite.
 
It looked like an ancient snake fossil, suggesting that the chain had been there for some time.
 
The rising sand bed, more pronounced on this side, meant that he was now in shallower water.
 
The chain was just visible above the water-line and Tayte noticed how eroded the links were.
 
Under closer scrutiny he thought they had to be weak enough to give out with the right persuasion.
 
If he could find a lump of rock big enough then maybe he could break one of the links apart.

He looked around, his vision blurring as he flicked his head one way then the other.
 
Then his eyes fell on something he hadn’t expected to see again.
 
The writing box was at the back of the cave.
 
The swell was playing with it, lifting it and tossing it among the rocks like a mouse at the mercy of some tireless cat.
 
He hadn’t heard its hollow clatter before over the sound of the breaking water, but now that he could see it, it yelled for his attention.
 
The box looked damaged.
 
The lid appeared to be loose - part hanging off.
 
He crawled towards it, catching his knee on a rock, reminding him of his priorities.

Amy...
 
What am I thinking?

He pulled the rock out from beneath the water and with both hands he flew at the exposed length of chain.
 
It landed right on target, sandwiching rusty steel between hard rock and the chain exploded, sending the remaining links crashing into the water.
 
He crawled back to Amy to find the rising water lapping at her mouth and nose.
 
With the chain broken she was slipping forward.
 
She seemed to stir as he caught hold of her and pulled the chain through the shackle until he was able to lift her clear.

Thank God,
he thought.
 
Then still on his knee’s he made for the exit with Amy cradled in his arms.
 
His touch must have reached her.
 
Amy’s eyes very slightly and very slowly opened.

“The box,” she said, like she could read his mind.

Tayte had already dismissed the idea.
 
“I can’t chance it,” he said.
 
“We need to get out of here.”
 
He kept going.

“Please!”
 
Amy’s eyes were staring again.
 
“Or all of this is for nothing.”

Her words stopped Tayte in his tracks.
 
He understood.
 
Amy needed to know why Gabriel had been murdered; why Simon Phillips had taken her husband’s life from her so abruptly and now so definitely.
 
Tayte understood, just as he knew he owed it to Schofield to finish what he’d started.
 
The writing box’s final secret had to be told to make any sense of his bizarre few days in Cornwall.
 
For Amy it meant everything now.
 
They had to win unequivocally, whatever the consequences.

Ahead, Tayte could no longer see the slit in the rock; the cave entrance was completely submerged now.
 
Getting out again would be difficult at best and to compound the problem, the chain that was still locked around Amy’s waist by the padlock would act like a dive belt as soon as they hit deeper water.
 
It would drag them both down.

One step at a time,
Tayte thought.
 
He carried Amy back, past the rock where she’d spent the worst part of the last two days, and set her down towards the back of the cave where the sand bed rose.
 
Over a clutter of broken bottles he could see the box again.
 
As he crawled through the tapering innermost reaches of the cave, holding his breath each time the swell washed over him, he could see that the box was definitely breaking up.
 
Returning for it in the morning when the tide was out - a thought that had crossed his mind - was not an option.

He threw a hand out for the box as soon as it was within reach, catching the lid as the swell surged into the box and ripped the main body away.
 
He watched the swell cast it over the rocks on a bed of frothing sea foam until it finally smashed against the back of the cave.
 
The pieces drifted on the backwash, suddenly insignificant and unrecognisable.
 
The box that had caused so much pain to all who encountered it was no more.
 
A fold of paper floated among the pieces briefly - Lowenna’s letter, Tayte supposed - then it dissolved in the water like wet rice paper.

Tayte’s heart sank.
 
But as he looked down at the lid in his hand - at the ivory carving of the lady reclined on a chaise - hope returned.
 
The left edge of the lid was cracked, revealing the damp corner of another fold of paper.
 
He tried to pull it free but it broke away as soon as he touched it.
 
Something, however, had moved.
 
The inner lining with the ivory rose dial slid away slightly from the carved outer piece and despite being cold and wet he felt his palms flush.

The box was giving up its final secret.

Inside that lid Tayte was sure he would learn the truth about what happened the night the
Betsy Ross
arrived from Boston; would know at last what really happened to Eleanor and her children.
 
Lowenna knew, as did her father and the impostor who called himself William Fairborne.
 
Clearly he carried that hold over James Fairborne to his grave.

Tayte hurried back to Amy, cutting his hands and knees on the bottle remnants in his haste.
 
He took a piece as he returned, thinking about that snagged propeller blade on the incapacitated inflatable.
 
When he reached Amy he saw no improvement; she was still that same blue-grey colour; still drifting in and out of consciousness.
 
He held up the lid like a trophy for her to see, trying to keep her eyes open and interested.
 
Then he slid the two sections apart and lifted out the papers that were folded in between.
 
They were damp, but not excessively so.
 
The space in the lid must have been tight, compressing the paper and keeping it dry.
 
Now he just had to figure out how to keep it that way.

He flashed the dive lamp around the cave to see if there was anything suitable, thinking it ironic that of all the plastic bottles that end up floating in the sea, there was never one around when you needed one.
 
He was starting to think that the lid itself might be the best place.
 
It had served well enough all these years.
 
But it was broken now.
 
He couldn’t be sure that the paper would be any good by the time he got back to the inflatable.
 
He thought about reading it aloud to Amy, in part just to try and keep her awake; he felt sure she would have insisted if she knew there was any chance of losing it.
 
But he suddenly saw the answer.
 
He needed something with a waterproof guarantee and it was right there in his hand: the dive lamp.

“Hang on,” he said, studying the lamp while he could still see it.
 
Then he switched it off and darkness was as sudden as it was absolute.
 
He unscrewed the base of the lamp to access the rechargeable cell, slipped it out and wrapped the papers around it.
 
Getting the cell back in was tight and he only knew he’d managed it when he flicked the dive lamp back on.

The first thing Tayte saw when the light returned was Amy.
 
In the brief darkness he’d remembered her as he’d seen her that night at her house when he’d first seen the box.
 
Now in the light again the stark contrast was too sudden a shock.
 
Her eyes were closed tight on a still and expressionless face that was ashen as death.
 
He pressed two fingers to her neck to check her pulse.
 
It was slow and weak.
 
He knew there was no way he could get her out unaided; he couldn’t even keep her conscious long enough to make the exit.
 
Then there was that chain belt to contend with.
 
He knew what he had to do, but he didn’t like it.

Tayte closed the two pieces of the writing box lid together and slipped them down the neck of his shirt.
 
He took a last look at Amy then made for deeper water and the exit, thinking about the Aquastar and the coastguard, knowing that help wasn’t far away.

Chapter Sixty-Two

T
he night felt cold on Tayte’s back as he tossed the dive lamp into the inflatable and climbed in after it like a struggling seal.
 
A wave of goose-bumps broke over his skin at the first hint of a barely discernible breeze and he could only imagine what it was like for Amy.
 
He clutched at a sore but minor gash to his stomach - a parting gesture from the jagged walls inside the tight cave entrance - then felt the sharp outline of broken glass in his trouser pocket.

He’d forgotten how choppy the water was in this enclosed space, hidden away in its own lost world behind that deep split in the cliff face.
 
He steadied himself and through the restricted view offered by the gap in the rocks, he looked out for any sign of Hayne and the Aquastar.

Where is he?
Tayte thought.

The Aquastar’s light was nowhere to be seen.
 
His only thought then was that he had to get the inflatable running again.
 
He had to find the help Amy so desperately needed.
 
He took out the piece of broken glass and threw himself over the back of the motor, grabbing a handful of tangled line.
 
As he went to hack into it, before a single strand had been cut, he heard a promising call.

“Hello!”

The voice was close by.
 
Tayte turned to see a mid-sized craft entering his field of vision to his left, not twenty feet away.
 
It had no light so he hadn’t seen it before.
 
Bastion’s call to the coastguard,
he thought.
 
They must have rallied the locals.

Tayte flashed the dive lamp across the approaching craft’s canopied bow.
 
“I need help here!” he called.
 
He grabbed an oar, pushed the inflatable towards the gap and paddled through.

The other craft met him as he cleared the gap.
 
It arrived bullishly and barely managed to stop in time.
 
The engine sounded erratic, rising and falling in pitch and power like whoever controlled it didn’t know forwards from reverse.
 
Tayte didn’t much care as long as the skipper had a radio or a phone that worked.
 
He shone his lamp onto the settling craft and confused recognition washed over him.

He was sure he knew that white boat with the walk-in bow canopy.
 
It looked identical to Laity’s fishing boat.
 
When he shone his light into the craft, to the man he was about to greet as Amy’s saviour, he knew just about everything in the picture before him was wrong.
 
After all the surrealism he’d experienced in the past few days, the cherry had just landed on the cake.
 
Tayte was incredulous.