All my love,
Gerald
The next sheet was the map. And that was all.
Sarah put the letter down. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes were filled with tears. The full horror of Gerald’s death had finally struck her, and her wounded heart repined at the thought of its manner and its possible meaning.
Ethan put his arm round her, and she let herself be comforted, but not consoled. She leant into his body, her head pressed against his shoulder, her frame racked by cruel sobbing. He did all he could to ease her pain, but he felt clumsy and without the amplitude of feeling that might have attuned him better to the limits of her distress. He rubbed her back and spoke soothing words, all the time struggling not to let himself be stirred by her presence, by the physicality of her, the smell of her perfume, the softness of her hair, or his own need to give and receive comfort. She was an entrancing and beautiful woman, and he feared he already had feelings for her that had to be suppressed for both their sakes. Even if she wasn’t his niece, the family didn’t know that.
In time she grew still. He let her pull away from him, blinking and drying her eyes with her knuckles.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘There’s no need to be. I loved him too. He should have died in his bed with all the family round him. Not where we found him, not in that way.’
She nodded, sniffing as she did so. Then she glanced at the clock.
‘Where are we going to sleep?’ she asked. ‘Can we stay here? The lodge is still cold, and all my stuff is here.’
‘We’re not really supposed to be here,’ he said. ‘We could be contaminating important evidence.’
‘We don’t have to go near the crime scene. And you’ve been in there already.’
He hesitated, then nodded. Bob should have posted someone in the house as a matter of routine. Perhaps it would be a good idea to stay.
‘We’ll have to get up early,’ he said. ‘Before Bob and his team arrive.’
‘Ethan…’ Sarah hesitated. ‘Can I sleep with you tonight?’
He looked at her, astonishment vivid on his face.
‘Come again?’
She reddened.
‘Oh, not…not like that, I don’t mean… Oh, hell, you mustn’t imagine I… What I meant was… I don’t want to spend the night alone, not after what happened. Our bedrooms aren’t exactly close together. What if something happened?’
‘Sarah, I don’t exactly think… I couldn’t… If you slept in my bed, well…you might be my niece and everything, but you’re an attractive woman and…’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean in your bed, not that. Why would you think that? In your room. There’s some sort of bunk bed in mine, we could just…’
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. She was talking sense. He had already brought a shotgun up from the gunroom in order to keep it next to him overnight.
‘You promise not to prance about in anything too…revealing or…’
‘Ethan, it is about a million degrees below freezing outside, a freezing fog is on its way from the West Country, and I shall be wearing my thickest thermal undies beneath layers of the gear I wear when I’m mountaineering. Or would you actually prefer it if I — what did you say? — pranced around in a tiny thong and socks?’
He had rather hoped to avoid having such an image implanted in his already overcharged brain.
‘I’m…that’s to say…I’m perfectly sure we can contrive something. But I’ll have the camp bed.’
‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.’
‘What about these relics, though — if that’s what they are? Shouldn’t we get them out of that miserable place? They may get rusty or something.’
‘Ethan, they have waited for decades. If they are rusty, they are rusty. If God has need of them, He has infinite patience, or so I’m told. I’m sure another night in the vault won’t do them any harm. We’ll fetch them in the morning. Now, all I want is to put my head on a pillow and crash out.’
They left without thinking, leaving the letter and the map behind.
When he next saw her, she was wearing a heavy-duty dressing gown raided from Senhora Salgueiro’s wardrobe. She kicked a leg to show him the flannelette pyjamas underneath.
Ethan did the rounds of the vast, almost empty house. He found the control panel for the burglar alarm, but could not locate the code number anywhere. It was too late to ring Senhora Salgueiro, but he thought it unlikely there would be any fresh break-ins over the next few hours. He headed back to his bedroom and slipped inside a sleeping bag on the narrow camp bed, mentally preparing himself for an uncomfortable night. He switched out the table lamp he’d placed on the floor next to him and wished Sarah goodnight.
‘Goodnight, Sarah. Try not to think about what’s happened. Get a good night’s sleep.’
‘I’m going to sleep for the next week,’ she answered, her voice slurred with tiredness. Moments later, light snoring filled the air.
‘Sarah? Sarah, are you still awake?’
Obviously not.
7
A Visit in the Night
Sleep came to Ethan at last, but it proved a troubled sleep, broken with dreams of the dead, nightmares in which every murder victim he had ever seen rose up from blood or water or earth to stalk him. They came to him, one followed by another, pallid remnants of human beings, some recognisable, others beyond all recognition. And they spoke to him of death and its suddenness, of the minute inflictions of pain that had brought them down, of the speed of a knife or the agony of a bullet crashing through the naked skull. Abi his wife stood among them, pointing and still, and his bleeding grandfather stood behind her, grinning and deathly pale.
He woke with a start. Images from the depths of sleep hung before his eyes, sounds from his dreams reverberated in his ears, and his brain struggled to break free. Then he heard a sound and knew it was in the room with him. Someone was moving in the darkness.
‘Sarah?’ he mumbled, thinking she must be trying to find her way through the dark to the bathroom. ‘Put the light on. Don’t you bloody fall on me.’
There was a scream, then someone switched the light on. The glare was too harsh for his sleep-filled eyes. He blinked, his head filling with jagged fragments of light that hurt his pupils like shards of fine glass. The scream echoed a second time. Sarah. He forced himself to keep his eyes open.
Two men were standing over Sarah, who lay on her back in bed. One was just switching off a torch. The other reached down and grabbed Sarah’s arm, pulling her out from the bedclothes, while she struggled to resist him. Her legs tangled with the covers, her assailant’s grip tightened, and inch by inch he dragged her out.
Ethan wriggled out of his sleeping bag. It was freezing cold, but he pulled himself free and got to his feet.
The man who had been holding the torch turned and looked at him.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘If your life means anything to you.’
When Ethan looked again, he saw that the man was holding a pistol and that it was pointing straight at him. Somewhere in his brain, he registered that the man had spoken with a foreign accent, German, perhaps, or Scandinavian.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m here to ask the questions,’ the armed man replied. ‘Do as I say and sit down.’
The other man had managed to pull Sarah free of the bedclothes, and to haul her to a standing position beside the bed. He remained silent throughout.