'Yet. .' he retorted. 'Try the others — white, yellow, red.'
She followed the sequence, pulling down the white tag, then the yellow. Finally her fingers tightened around the red leather strip and she gave it a gentle tug. There was a hollow click. But nothing happened.
Laura got to her feet as Philip picked up the rucksack and kicked the waders away from the door. For several moments nothing happened, then they heard a creaking sound. It grew louder and they stepped back as the stone slab pivoted into the room, revealing a black hole beyond.
'Here we go,' Philip said.
Immediately inside the doorway, they saw two ancient-looking wood-and-rag torches in wall brackets. Laura reached for her matches. The old torches cast a poor light and the electric flashlights were still needed to dispel the gloom. Philip took a cautious step forward.
They were in another stone-walled room, but it was much smaller than the chamber they had just left; and this one was rectangular and low-ceilinged. Directly ahead stood an archway draped in massive cobwebs. They trained their torch beams on the opening. Beyond it a corridor fell away into the darkness. Two feet ahead of them, the floor of the room simply disappeared. Laura gasped and Philip gripped her arm.
'Wow,' she said.
They directed their torches towards the gaping hole. A chasm at least twenty feet across, it took up most of the room. On the far side there was another two-foot-wide platform before the archway, and to left and right the hole stretched to the walls of the chamber. It was a yawning black pit, the bottom invisible. But as their eyes adjusted to the light they could make out the faint outline of sixteen coloured circles like stepping stones across the chasm. Each circle formed the top of a narrow pedestal that thrust up from the blackness of the pit.
'What do you reckon?' Philip said.
'I can see the black, white, yellow and red at just the right intervals. Come on.' Before Philip could say anything, Laura had stepped onto the black-topped pedestal in the first row.
With one foot on the strip of floor close to the door and the other alighting on the black circle, it looked for a second as though she had made a good decision and that they would soon be across the void. But as she lowered her full weight the pedestal began to crumble. Laura screamed and lost her balance. The pedestal powdered beneath her feet. She spun round and Philip saw her blind panic as she flailed at the dead air, clutching at nothing. Missing the edge of the pit by at least six inches, she crashed downwards into emptiness.
Chapter 38
Oxford: 30 March, 9.35 p.m.
Monroe felt utterly depressed as he drove along The High, heading out of the city centre towards Headington Hill. Another couple had been murdered. Although it vindicated his suspicions that Cunningham could not be the killer, it also meant that two more young people had died and he was no nearer finding the maniac who was responsible. It also proved beyond doubt that Laura Niven and Philip Bainbridge had been right all along about the astrological connection; this latest abomination had been committed exactly when they had predicted it would.
He punched a key on his car phone and the duty officer at the station answered almost immediately. 'Any luck contacting Bainbridge?' Monroe asked.
'Nothing sir, just his voicemail again.'
'OK, call his mobile every five minutes and keep trying the house. I want to know the moment you reach him.'
Just before Headington Hill, Monroe turned off into Marston Road. A few hundred yards down on the left he swung the car onto a muddy track called Kings Mill Lane. He saw immediately, fifty yards ahead, the floodlights and the reflective jackets of his team. Three police cars and an ambulance were parked to one side of the lane. As he drew closer, he could see an elderly man sitting just inside the ambulance with a red blanket over his shoulders. An oxygen mask was strapped to his face.
Monroe pulled the car over beside the other vehicles, and walked over to the ambulance. 'What's happened here?'
The paramedic took Monroe to one side. 'Old boy found the bodies about forty minutes ago. He's in shock.' Monroe raised an eyebrow. 'Says he walked right past them on his way towards Mesopotamia Walk from Headington but then realised something was up when he saw them again on his way back home. Take a look — you'll see what I mean.'
The lane was soaked from the heavy rain and Monroe's shoes squelched in the mud. It was all he could do to keep his balance. But a few yards further on, the track led onto a narrow tarmac path that ran on towards an old mill and the river walk.
Ten yards ahead, Forensics had just finished erecting a white plastic screen across the path. As Monroe approached, a young constable held a flap open for him and he ducked under the retaining bar to emerge on the other side.
Two floodlights had been set up and they produced a harsh lemon light. Another wall of white plastic stood twenty feet away along the path. It started to drizzle again and the floodlights caught the droplets of water, making them glisten in the pallid night. To his right, Monroe could see a bench beside the path. He caught a glimpse of two figures seated there, but they were partially obscured by someone dressed in a Forensics suit. As the man stood up Monroe recognised a grim-faced Mark Langham, who stepped back to allow Monroe his first clear look at the dead couple.
They had been positioned to appear as though they were embracing, their faces close together, lips almost touching. A passer-by giving them a casual glance would think that they were simply a couple in love. Monroe felt a momentary frisson of disgust.
He bent down to take a closer look. In the floodlight beams the skin of their faces and hands had taken on a puce hue. Their dead stares were fixed ahead. Both of them were fully dressed but their clothes were dishevelled and stained. Gail Honeywell had her left palm at Raymond Delaware's neck as though pulling him towards her lips. Monroe felt his jaw clench as he spotted the black and red gash of the victim's ripped throat.
Langham crouched down beside Monroe. 'They've been dead for at least two hours,' he said. 'And if you look here' — he pointed to a blood-soaked area just above the hem of the girl's opened jacket — 'I would imagine this is where the murderer removed an organ. . assuming it's the same killer, with the same MO. And then there's this. .' He gently turned Gail Honeywell's head.
The side of the girl's face was a patchwork of deep gashes. Broad streaks of blood ran down her neck and across her right shoulder, drenching her blouse red. Her right eye was missing.
'The amount of blood would indicate that these injuries were sustained pre-mortem,' Langham remarked. 'This is different from the earlier murders. Really weird.'
Monroe made no comment. He straightened, staring at the lifeless faces of the young couple. Then he noticed a dull and faded metal plaque screwed to one of the wooden planks across the back of the bench. It must have been there for as long as the bench had stood in this spot. It said: 'Oh Rest a Bit for 'tis a Rare Place to Rest At.'
'How very droll,' he said under his breath.
Monroe was a few paces away from the car when his phone rang.
'Rogers, sir. I thought you wouldn't mind being disturbed. Just got the report back from the lab on the blood sample from the second murder.' 'And?'
'A perfect match — it belongs to Malcolm Bridges.'
Chapter 39
Oxford: 30 March, 10.15 p.m.
'You fool!' The Master was glaring at him, his eyes bulging, sweat running down his cheeks. 'You moronic. . you could have destroyed everything.' He slapped the Acolyte hard across the face.
For an instant the Acolyte almost lost control. His right hand twitched.