Nemesis (27 page)

To be on the safe side she took the telephone with her. When she opened the door, instead of a furious James, there was a man she’d never seen before.

“Hello,” he said, eyeing the telephone in her hand and perhaps assuming he was interrupting a conversation. “Is this a bad time?”

Only decades of inherent politeness stopped her from closing the door in his face.
“For what?”

44

A powerful beam of light illuminated the crypt.

“Sorry,” said Bryn. “I thought you were the police.”

If Natalie still had her phone, she would have thrown it at him.

“What the
hell
are you doing here?”

“The same as you,” he said. “I’m trying to find answers.”

“You were following me!”

“I was here first.”

“You seriously need to get a life. Do you know that?”

“Why?” One corner of his mouth lifted irrepressibly. “Yours is so much more interesting.”

It was easier to ignore him. Natalie dropped to her knees to scrabble amongst the dirt and the debris for her phone, and found it lying against Humfreye’s tomb. She scooped it up, checking for damage. It seemed OK, although something had scratched the screen.

“You won’t get a signal,” he said. “We must be twenty feet underground.”

Did he think she was stupid? “I was using it as a torch.”

“I’ve got a torch.” He held it up.

“I noticed.”

She also noticed he’d had the opportunity to change his clothes since last night and was now wearing a thick green sweater instead of his usual leather jacket and plaid shirt. It was a small comfort to see he was still as filthy as
herself
.

“The police know we’re here,” she told him. “They’ve taken the rope away.”

“I’m hoping there’s another way out.” He flicked the torch around the crypt. “Did you know this place was here?”

She dropped her phone back into her bag. “No, did you?”

“There was no other way my cousin’s body could have got down that shaft.”

It was the same conclusion she had come to - unless the person who’d shoved him down there had the key to the gate, which would point the finger firmly at a member of Alicia’s family. Loyalty guaranteed her silence.

“I suppose the tunnel provided a water supply to the castle during a siege,” he said.

“We’re not under the
castle,
we’re in the crypt beneath the chapel.”

“Really?”
He ran the beam of the torch along the wall where he’d been standing. Glimpses of rough-hewn stone could be seen amongst the crumbling and flaking plaster. “I found some steps in the corner but they don’t lead anywhere.” The light paused on a flight of narrow stone steps, dark with damp, leading sharply upwards.

“You’re looking in the wrong place.” She pushed his arm up a few inches and the torchlight flickered towards the vaulted ceiling. “See that upside down ‘v’ shape? I expect that was the entrance from the chapel.”

“No use to us - it’s been bricked up.”

“It’s also beneath several tons of soil.”

“A cheering thought.” He dimmed the beam and turned back to face her. “Do you think the Vyne family know the crypt is here?”

“Sir Henry was really into the history of the castle.” Natalie remembered the piles of yellowing manuscripts and the mustiness of the library, despite the warmth of the well-stoked fire. “He was writing a book about it.”

“It’s not on any of the estate plans I’ve seen.”

“Perhaps people thought it had been destroyed with the chapel during the civil war, and then they forgot about it?”

Bryn sat on the corner of Humfreye’s tomb. “Why do I get the feeling I’m wasting my time? That this,” he gestured around at the crypt, “as beautiful and strange as it is, has nothing to do with anything.”

“You found out what happened to Geraint. I thought it was important to you to know how he
died?
”

“It was - is,” he said, running his fingers through his hair and dislodging a shower of dust and dirt. “I’ve come this far
- ”
He broke off, staring around the crypt. “Christ, who’d have thought it? What the hell was he even doing down here?”

Natalie had to agree with him. She’d thought that finding the tunnel would solve everything. Instead it had thrown up more questions.

“Geraint and Sarah died on the same night,” she said. “That much is obvious. But what links the two?”

“That fucking castle!”
Bryn kicked out at a stack of wooden chairs in pure frustration. They collapsed, disintegrating into little more than sticks of firewood and sending up a choking cloud of dust. “And the fucking rich bastards who live there.”

“I think everything will become clearer when we get out of here,” she said calmly. “Give me the torch.”

He held it above his head, out of her reach. “I’ve checked everywhere. There’s no sign of another tunnel.”

Exasperated, Natalie held out her hand. “Torch,
now
.”

He slapped it into her open palm. “Knock yourself out.”

“An interesting turn of phrase.”

“I didn’t mean it literally.” He flipped open his satchel and took out a small bottle, which he offered to her. She took it
dubiously,
relieved to find it was only water. “You won’t find anything,” he added.

She took a sip, returned his bottle of water and looked back at the tunnel. “If the well is that way, we’ve travelled west. The most direct route would therefore be in the north wall.” She pointed to the right side of the crypt.

For a moment he said nothing. Then, begrudgingly, “That sounds logical.” He slid off the tomb, slung his satchel over his shoulder and helped her clear a path through the rubbish.

The wall had not been plastered here. Instead, it was set with several large slabs of stone - monuments - all inscribed with the Vyne family name and crest. The dates were entirely from the early 17
^th
century. Were there coffins behind them? And bodies? Natalie shuddered.

He glanced down at her. “Did you bring a sledgehammer?”

“Sorry, that’d be in my other handbag.”

“Lucky I’ve got this.” He produced a small jemmy from the satchel and grinned.

She stared at it incredulously. “I’m not even going to ask why you thought you were going to need that!”

“I’ve got bolt cutters too. The well had a gate over it. I thought I might meet another one.”

“Let’s try something more subtle first, OK?” She stepped up to the nearest monument and began to run her fingers over the surface, checking each protuberance for a hidden mechanism.

Once he understood what she was up to, he did likewise. He worked from the right; and she worked from the left. After ten minutes, they met in the middle. Here was the largest slab of all; a four foot edifice to a single family. Each name, along with a date, was listed beneath a large swirly ‘V’, which had been engraved on raised stone tile.

“This is the one,” he said confidently. “The others have the crest but only this one has a ‘V’.”

“V for Vyne,” she said dismissively.

“It’s not a ‘V’, it’s an arrow.” He slammed his fist against the stone tile.

The diamond-shaped panel slid back into the stone. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, from somewhere behind the wall, came the sound of stone grating against stone and the whole slab juddered back into the wall, leaving a two foot gap at either side.

Bryn snatched the torch from her hand and squeezed his bulk into the tunnel.

“What happened to ‘ladies first’?” she called after him.

The only sound that came back was an echo.

As he had the torch, the light faded rapidly. She felt a squirm of apprehension. Any moment now and she was going to be left alone in the dark.

Then, just as unexpectedly, he was back - seizing her hand and pulling her into the hole after him. “What are you waiting for?
A royal invitation?”

Like the tunnel they’d left behind, it was not wide enough to walk side-by-side but it did slope upwards. There were no tree roots, because they were walking beneath the lawn where there were no trees. Halfway along, another archway appeared.

Bryn perfunctorily shone the torch through the gap. “Priest’s
hole
; going nowhere,” he said, drawing her onwards.

After another five minutes’ walk steadily uphill, the air became more humid. He still held her hand. She could feel it grow slippery with sweat. The silence was driving her crazy. She realised neither of them had really spoken about the events of the previous day. How could she broach the subject?

“I’m sorry about Geraint,” she said, to the back of his head.

He didn’t break his stride. “I knew he was dead. He would have made contact otherwise.” Bryn’s voice was flat, all trace of his former humour erased.

She remembered the horrible things she had said to him and Siân, at that pub in London. It seemed a lifetime ago.

“Do the police know how he died?” she asked him.

“His skull was cracked but what did it for him was the broken neck.”

Pretty much synonymous with being chucked down a well, she thought, but twisted it into a more tactful, “He definitely fell then?”

There was the briefest hesitation. “Or someone broke it for him.”

They walked a few more minutes in silence.

“Why did Geraint come to the castle?”

This time there was no response, all she could hear was his breathing, laboured because of the lack of fresh air.

Maybe he hadn’t heard her.
“Bryn?
Why did
- ”

“He was with Sarah,”
came
the terse reply.

“Calahurst is full of bars, pubs and clubs. Why would a couple of teenagers want to visit a neo-Norman castle in the dead of night?”

Bryn stopped walking. She thought they’d reached the end of the tunnel but instead he slowly swung around to face her. The torch pointed towards the ground, leaving his face in shadow.

No one knows I’m here, she realised. He could hit me over the head with a rock and no one would be any the wiser.

“There are a couple of things I haven’t told you,” he said carefully.

No shit
?

But she kept her mouth firmly shut.

“You saw where we lived?”

It took a moment for her to work out what he was talking about.
“The caravan at the fairground?”

“We were two ordinary lads, with no money and big dreams.”

Where was this conversation heading? She wished she’d left her phone in her pocket and not in her bag. There was no way she’d be able to find her way back through the crypt in the dark, and even if she did, the rope leading back up the well had gone. She was well and truly trapped here with him.

How could she have been so stupid to get herself in this situation?

“What do you think we were doing at the castle?” he asked, when she failed to respond.

Natalie thought she could almost hear the beat of her heart echoing through the airless tunnel.
“We?”

“Think about it, Natalie. If you need a clue
… ”
He took something from the satchel and held it up.

The jemmy glinted silver in the torchlight.

She took a step back, feeling the weight of her fear pressing against her chest.

And then she made the connection. “You came to the castle to break in? Were you
crazy
?”

He dropped the jemmy back into the bag. “You think we should have started with something smaller - say, a bungalow?”

She felt some of the tension ebb away. “Be serious - please?”

Bryn sighed. “After you’d left, Sarah told Geraint about the castle and the guy who lived here - a regular pervert who could only get it up with teenage girls. She told him how to get in and where Henry kept his cash - she knew we wouldn’t have been interested in anything else. We wouldn’t have known an antique if it bit us on the arse, even less what to do with it.”

“Why would Sarah do that?”

“She told Geraint she needed his help. She told him about your father, what a bastard he was and how your mother was too busy going out on the town to stand up for you. Sarah told us she’d been having sex with an old guy who lived in a castle. He’d taken some kinky photographs of her and she wanted them back. She was getting married and knew if this other guy ever found out what she’d been up to, he’d dump her.”

“Sarah was getting
married
? How would you know this? Why would she confide in
you
?”

“She knew we were thieves, she’d seen the stolen goods we’d hidden in the caravan. She needed us to break into the castle for her. She said it would be easy. There were no alarms, no security cameras - because there was nothing worth stealing except for the stuff he kept in the safe - and she knew the combination.”

“You’re making this up! Sarah wasn’t a thief, and she would never have had sex with Sir Henry. He was her
father
!”

Bryn gave a short, humourless laugh. “I don’t think so! The things she told me they did - Christ, and I thought I’d heard it all.”

“You’re
lying
!” She was shaking, despite the heat and the sweat pouring off her. “Sir Henry was Sarah’s father,” she repeated, through chattering teeth. “I know he was. After she died, Sir Henry gave my mother money. He let us stay in the Lodge. He paid for me to go to college and for my father to receive the private health care at Rose Court. Why would he do all that?”