Vengeance Child

by Simon Clark

  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 . . .’

  ‘Victor.’ Laura touched his arm. ‘There’s something else. I found this between the passenger seat and the door.’ She held up an oblong box in black plastic.

  ‘Ghorlan’s voice recorder.’ After taking it from Laura he examined it. ‘Jay showed me Ghorlan putting this in her pocket the day she died. In fact, Jay repeatedly told me that past events aren’t always what they seem.’ He frowned. ‘It’s been left switched to record.’ He thumbed the play button. Nothing happened. The machine was dead, of course, the batteries would have become exhausted years ago. ‘So it might have been running when . . .’ He clenched the recording device in his fist. ‘And whoever did that to my wife also left her fleece on the beach to make it look as if she’d drowned.’ The ice in his blood became fire. ‘Whoever did this to her I’m going to find! They are going to wish they’d never been born!’

  ‘Victor.’ Laura spoke softly. ‘I’ll get you and Archer home.’

  ‘No.’ He heard the steel in his voice. ‘I’ve got to see this through. I’m in second stage. In a few hours I’ll be in a coma. Not long after that I might be dead. In the time I have left I’m going to move heaven and earth to find out who murdered my wife. Stay put.’

  ‘Victor, where are you going? I don’t want Archer to be down here a moment longer – Victor!’

  He raced up the steps, then across the rubble of the wall he’d demolished. Rain beat down in the yard as he ran back to the groundskeeper’s cabin. There he ransacked the desk until he’d found what he was looking for. A moment later he returned to the vault. Laura stood with her arm round Archer. The light from her lantern revealed the entombed car in every detail. And entombed in that car the woman he’d married. At that instant, however, he felt no grief. A hunger for vengeance drove him. His mind had cleared. Exhaustion vanished from his limbs. Ghorlan’s killer would face his wrath.

  He held up a blister pack. ‘Batteries,’ he announced.

  ‘Victor, should you be doing this?’

  ‘Like I said. I might be dead in a few hours.’ He held her gaze. ‘Will you help me, Laura?’

  ‘You know I will.’

  ‘Thank you. But first I’m going to find out who took her from me. Then if they’re on this island I’m going to rip them apart.’

  He noticed the way that Laura looked at Archer. To see if Victor’s hate-filled words had impacted on the boy. But he’d retreated inside himself. He didn’t appear to see or hear anything.

  Quickly, as if driven by a power from outside of himself, Victor snapped the batteries from the pack, slotted them into the voice recorder, then held it up. ‘Here goes,’ he said. ‘I hope to God it still works.’

  Forty-Five

  The thickness of the masonry around them muted the fury of the breaking storm outside. Here in the vault a silence reigned. However, Laura sensed a tension in the air. It was like waiting for lightning to strike. Victor had rewound the tape in the voice recorder; now he pressed play. She stood with Archer hugged to her side. The car squatted there, a loathsome steel coffin. Within it, the dried husk of Ghorlan’s corpse. Laura realized that whoever had killed her had placed the body in the back seat, then they’d hidden the car in the vault, which had then been bricked up. By declaring the vault structurally unsound, so as to be far too dangerous to enter, the murderer had been convinced the car and its grim contents would never be found.

  Victor stood there in the brilliant light of the gas lanterns that emitted a serpent-like hissing. He held the device level with his eyes, perhaps needing to see it as it revealed its secrets.

  Maybe it was the odd sound the tape machine made – a click followed by a whirr as its motor drove the spools for the first time in years – that made Archer suddenly utter, ‘Jay brought me here. Then the lady gave me the bracelet.
I didn’t know who to give it to. Please don’t let her hurt me.’ Laura tightened her arm around his thin shoulders, the gentle pressure offering some comfort in this frightening place.

  Victor locked his gaze on to the machine. The speaker emitted a hiss. At first Laura thought it might be the sound of static, but as it surged, then receded, she realized she heard the whisper of trees.

  A woman’s voice, pleasantly coloured with a Portuguese accent, could be heard with astonishing clarity. ‘Do you have problem with your car? Have you broken down?’

  A male voice answered, yet he must have been too far away from the microphone to be recorded properly. In her mind’s eye, Laura pictured Ghorlan as she was in life. She must have approached the man in his car as leaves in the trees rustled. Either she carried the voice recorder in such a way that it wouldn’t be seen or she’d hidden it in a pocket.

  ‘Oh? Your car is fine.’ Ghorlan’s voice again. ‘I thought it had a fault. This track isn’t ideal for driving. Tractor, yes. But cars become bogged the mud. See, already it’s starting to rain.’

  The male voice again, yet too faint to discern a reply or identify the speaker. Victor’s brow furrowed as he strained to hear it.

  Ghorlan spoke casually. However, Laura sensed she was pretending to be relaxed. ‘May I sit in the passenger seat out of the rain? Thank you.’ Rustling; the clunk of a door shutting. ‘Thank you. The forecast promised it would be fine tonight.’

  Then the male voice cut through the vault with the abruptness of a punch. ‘What brings you out on an evening like this, Ghorlan? I thought you’d be with Victor at the hostel. Isn’t he telling those students all about the joys of counting speckled newts and tagging stoats or whatever it is the pair of you do?’

  Victor knew the identity of the man. The hand that gripped the voice recorder turned white as he squeezed it in cold-blooded fury.

  When Ghorlan spoke again it confirmed her male companion. ‘Mayor Wilkes, you don’t like us, do you? And you hate that as rangers we obstruct your schemes that would decimate wildlife on the island.’

  ‘You and Victor are killing progress. What do the lives of a few deer – ugly little dwarf deer – matter when it comes to bringing wealth to the island?’

  ‘You mean bring wealth to yourself, Mr Mayor.’

  ‘Have you come all this way into the woods to harangue me, Ghorlan?’

  ‘No, I came to stop you using the rifle.’

  ‘Rifle?’

  As the voices came ghosting from the machine Laura sensed Ghorlan was building up to reveal some shocking truth. A gentle thud sounded. Laura could picture Ghorlan slipping the voice recorder from her pocket to rest on the seat between her thigh and the passenger door. Out of sight of Wilkes but better placed to pick up the conversation. Ghorlan clearly wanted to record this meeting. It was vitally important to her. But why? What’s more, Laura sensed the tension growing. Already she knew how this conversation ended. Clenching her fist, she listened to Ghorlan address Mayor Wilkes as they had sat in that car ten years ago.

  ‘I saw you with the rifle just twenty minutes ago.’ Ghorlan spoke calmly. ‘You were stalking the deer in the forest.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Don’t mock me with lies, Mayor Wilkes. I know exactly what you are planning. The rifle fires darts which vets use to inject drugs into wild animals.’

  ‘Preposterous.’

  ‘No, Mayor Wilkes. I have you figured out. You have obtained a virus culture that causes epidemics in hoofed feral creatures like deer. You know that all you have to do is dart one animal and it will be infected. That infection will spread quickly through such a small herd as this. Nobody will be able to trace the infection back to you. Conservation officers will assume that this was a natural outbreak. Of course, with all the Saban dead the special classification of Siluria will be downgraded.’

  ‘Go on.’ Wilkes’ voice became cold. He was calculating his options.

  ‘Once the status of the island is compromised it means your plans for commercial development – a new hotel, golf course, lots of new houses – will not be opposed on conservation grounds. In short, Mr Mayor, you will become an extremely rich man.’

  ‘You’ve no proof.’ From his tone Laura could imagine he was smiling. ‘No proof whatsoever.’

  ‘I saw you with the rifle.’

  ‘Your word against mine.’

  ‘You have managed to dart one of the animals. As you hoped the dart fell out after injecting the culture into the deer. Then you threw the rifle and the phial, containing the culture, into the river. It is deep, with many underwater ravines, the weapon will never be found.’

  ‘You have good eyesight, Mrs Brodman.’ He paused. ‘Even if what you allege is true, then it is now too late. The epidemic that will sweep through those animals in the next few days will destroy them. What’s your response to that?’

  ‘Then I admit I am too late in preventing you from firing the hypodermic into the deer. But . . .’ A note of triumph had raised Ghorlan’s voice.

  ‘But?’

  ‘I knew about the virus culture you’d obtained. You’ve treated your secretary so appallingly – forcing her to act illegally by blackmailing her – that she confessed to me that you’d ordered her to keep the culture in her refrigerator. So, when she told me about your plan I asked her to put the phial, containing the culture, into a pan of boiling water for an hour.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘Once the culture was heated to boiling point the virus died. What you’ve succeeded in doing, Mr Mayor, is inject an animal with a sterile solution. So no epidemic, no extermination of the herd. Your plan is all—’

  The sound of the smack made both Laura and Victor flinch.

  Ghorlan’s voice came one last time. ‘So you’ve succeeded in spilling some blood today, but hitting me won’t stop this reaching the police. You’ve—’

  Laura found herself trying to scrunch her senses up tight inside so she could neither hear nor allow herself to imagine what must have been happening in the car. The man had gone berserk. He screamed abuse at Ghorlan. No individual words could be identified but the fury in his voice was nothing less than an assault on their nerves in its own right. It went on for entire minutes. Mixed with the man’s insane ranting were the sounds of a scuffle. Then a clunk. That must have been when the recording machine slipped from the seat into the deep furrow between the body of the car below the passenger door and the seat runner. Laura couldn’t prevent herself from picturing the final moments. Wilkes’ hands around Ghorlan’s throat. His maniacal stare. Only the briefest of choking noises before his fierce grasp squeezed her windpipe shut. Then, later, a series of rapid thumps as the woman’s death spasm caused her arms to flail against the car’s interior.

  After that, nothing but the hiss of tape. Eventually that, too, ended with a click.

  Victor breathed deeply. ‘Part of me wants to – longs to – go to pieces. But I’m not going to let this overwhelm me. I owe it to Ghorlan to keep focused. Then I’ll find Wilkes. The man took her from me. I’m going to pay him back. This disease is killing me. So, if this is my last act on earth I’m going to do it right.’ An icy calm descended on Victor. ‘After killing Ghorlan he drove the car to the vault. Back then it was still used to store equipment. No doubt Wilkes bribed a structural engineer to declare it unsafe. Then Wilkes had some of his men brick up all the entrances: the car safely hidden inside; nobody would ever find it.’ He nodded. ‘Wilkes employs a lot of ex-prisoners. Not for the love of humanity, but so he can pressure them into doing his dirty work. You can imagine he kept watch over them as they cemented bricks into the doorway, just to make sure none checked what was under the blanket in the back of the car. They wouldn’t have known what he’d done. What’s more, they knew better than to even speculate about it amongst themselves.

  So the wall went up: Wilkes had successfully buried another of his dirty little secrets.’

  Applause sounded in the vault; a slow sarca
stic-sounding handclap.

  ‘Congratulations, Brodman. It took a decade to uncover the truth, and ten miserable years staring into the river, but you got there in the end.’

  Laura spun round to see Wilkes on the steps. His expression was one of such loathsome gloating she shuddered.

  ‘Although, really it was down to Archer, not you, Brodman. Such a brave little boy.’

  ‘Wilkes.’ Victor seized the hammer that he’d used to smash down the wall.

  ‘You’re outgunned, old boy. And outwitted.’ As he descended the steps into the light he revealed what he carried. Instead of aiming the shotgun at Victor, however, he aimed it at Laura as she stood with her arm around Archer’s shoulders.

  ‘Victor.’ Wilkes smiled. ‘Watch me annihilate two people with a single shell.’

  Forty-Six

  Victor stopped mid-stride. Wilkes remained on the bottom step. Rainwater dripped from his once neatly pressed business suit. The man chambered a round into the breech of the shotgun he aimed at Archer and Laura.

  Wilkes curled his lip. ‘I thought that would stop you, Brodman.’

  Victor lowered the hammer. ‘Let them go, Wilkes.’

  ‘Why on earth should I? Remember who’s holding the gun.’

  ‘What made you kill Ghorlan? Surely losing some development deal on the island wasn’t the reason.’

  Wilkes glared. ‘Because you, Brodman, and your sort, have always blocked my plans for progress.’

  Laura spoke up. ‘You don’t like being thwarted, do you, Wilkes? Throwing a tantrum at being stopped is the classic symptom of a spoiled child.’ She tightened her arm around Archer. ‘When it comes down to it, this boy here is bigger than you.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Laura’s eyes became fiery. ‘You’re a spoilt little boy in a man’s body. You want to take all the time. I bet you’re never satisfied, are you? If someone gives you a cake you go home to brood why it couldn’t have been two cakes. If you make a million profit you can’t sleep at night because you’re angry that it wasn’t two million. I’m right, aren’t I?’