Landscape of Lies

by Peter Watson

‘Shhh!’ He turned the spanner flat and banged it against the head of the screwdriver. The crack echoed around the church. The figure didn’t budge. He tried again.

  ‘The noise!’

  Michael said nothing but transferred the screwdriver to the open palm of the figure’s other hand. He hammered the screwdriver a third time. Again the crack ricocheted down the nave but still the figure didn’t move.

  He shifted the screwdriver to a point in the middle of the figure’s feet, where they were crossed, one above the other. Isobel went to speak but Michael snapped, ‘One more. One more.’

  He drew back his hand and brought the spanner down on the screwdriver. This time the crack was muted as the lower half of the figure swung inwards and the top half, swivelling about an invisible axis in the wall, dipped outwards, revealing an oval cavity in the centre of the tympanum.

  ‘No pillar of salt,’ said Isobel quietly.

  ‘The light! Quick!’

  Isobel handed up the light to Michael, who shone the beam into the hole. ‘A box! Hold the light again. Shine it up here.’

  As Isobel did so, Michael reached into the cavity. It wasn’t very big but he could just curl his hands around the box or casket, which felt as if it was made of metal but covered perhaps in leather which had dried and cracked. He couldn’t see but it also felt as if it was covered in dust and crumbs—mice or rat droppings.

  He took the box out. It measured perhaps a foot square and was about nine inches deep. It wasn’t heavy, and Michael handed it down to Isobel. She placed the light on the table and took the box from him. He stood up straight again and felt into the cavity a second time. His hands explored the dusty, dirty edges. The hiding place was empty.

  Michael got down from the chair and followed Isobel off the table on to the stone floor of the church. He held the box while Isobel pulled back what they could see was an old leather casing, now so dry it was solid like a biscuit. A lid was revealed which was fastened. Michael took the screwdriver and inserted it between the lid and the side of the box. With difficulty, he prised upwards. There was a rattle, another crack, and the metal began to buckle.

  ‘Careful!’ hissed Isobel. ‘We’re not vandals.’

  Now Michael inserted the screwdriver between the metal flap over the lock and the lock itself. He prised outwards. Nothing happened.

  ‘Hrrgh!’

  Next he twisted the screwdriver and as he did so the top of the flap sheared away from the lid, which lifted open a fraction. Michael jerked it back and Isobel shone the torch inside.

  Involuntarily, Michael grunted in horror.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ gasped Isobel.

  ‘Well, it certainly isn’t silver.’

  Isobel held the light as he reached into the box and took from it, one by one, three small, fragile objects, each of them roughly the size of an egg.

  ‘They look like skulls,’ said Isobel.

  ‘Not human. Rats, cats, dogs, rabbits … foxes perhaps.’

  ‘What’s that other thing?’

  Michael reached into the box again and took out what was still inside. ‘A bracelet, a necklace?’

  Isobel shook her head. ‘The central opening is too small. And you couldn’t wear it—it’s like a plate or a record.’ The object was a series of metal rings, one inside the other and fastened together so that they formed a flat disc. ‘Three skulls, nine rings,’ said Isobel, counting them. ‘Twelve in all. Michael, I don’t like this. It was all supposed to end here. Now we’re landed with another, entirely unexpected … joke?’

  ‘It’s not a joke. It must stand for something very simple. The rings of Saturn? We’ve been following the Landscape of Lies, remember. The painter lied about the final number of clues. It’s a last-minute failsafe.’ He put the skulls back into the box. ‘Vron will know what these mean.’ He took the rings from Isobel. Or he thought he had, but in the gloom she had let go before he could take hold of them. The rings slid over the smooth edge of the wood to the stone floor.

  The heavy iron of the rings pealed and clattered against the stones, a baritone clang that rolled down the nave.

  ‘We’re going to wake everyone here,’ said Michael grimly, moving across to pick them up. ‘Shine the torch over here, will you, so I can see what I’m doing.’

  ‘Allow me,’ said a voice, and a powerful torch beam immediately flooded the floor where Michael was kneeling.

  He went cold. He had never heard Grainger speak but he had no doubt whose voice it was. As he looked up, he heard Isobel gasp and he saw why. Grainger was holding a shotgun—and behind him was a boat-hook.

  In the dark behind the light of the beam, Grainger chuckled. It sounded to Michael like a death rattle. ‘Lucky for me you were here after all. Moving the table all by myself was going to be a problem. That’s why I gave myself all night. I came back here yesterday for a close look at the Crucifix but the damn building was closed. So I wasn’t absolutely certain. But you have done the hard work for me. My congratulations to you both. Very dogged of you to stick with me for so long.’ He waved the gun in his hand. ‘But this, I think, makes me the winner.’

  He moved a step further into the church.

  ‘Now, this is what we are going to do. First, Miss Sadler, you will push back the part of the tympanum which is open. Then you will both lift back the table to where it came from and replace the hymn-books. Very enterprising, that was, if I may say so. You will also put back the chair in the choir and kick away the dirt that fell from the boxes, so that we leave no sign of what’s been happening.’

  Michael was shaking with anger and fear, mentally kicking himself for being so stupid as to leave the church unlocked and unguarded. How could he have been so foolish? Grimly he did as he was told.

  Grainger watched as his instructions were obeyed. He took Michael’s torch and slipped it into his own pocket.

  ‘Now, Miss Sadler, you will carry the box. You will go first, Mr Whiting, followed by Miss Sadler. I shall bring up the rear, with this gun and this boat-hook. I shall have to switch off the torch as we leave the church but, if you act in any way unusually, Mr Whiting, please remember that I can damage Miss Sadler with this boat-hook in absolute silence. I shall only use the gun second, on you. Is that clear?’

  Michael didn’t move.

  ‘I said, “Is that clear?”’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘Good. Now please step out of the porch, turn right, then right again, and follow the path across the cemetery.’

  So that was it! Michael had been wondering why they had not heard Grainger’s car or motor bike arrive. He had come by boat up the river! Michael now recalled that cry from a bird on the water. It must have been disturbed by Grainger. What idiots they had been, not to anticipate that and to abandon their lookout. On the other hand, they could never have got the treasure down without both of them helping … They had played straight into Grainger’s hands.

  Isobel clutched the box containing the skulls and the rings. Michael wanted to reach out and stroke her hand, but just then Grainger snapped off his torch and barked, ‘Right, in single file please. And no adventures along the way. I don’t want to harm you but if I have to I will.’

  ‘Just a second,’ Grainger added as they stepped out into the night. ‘Mr Whiting, I see there’s a key in the church door. I take it you found where the thing was hidden. Please lock the church and put the key back where you found it. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves but if we do I want your fingerprints on the door.’

  Michael obeyed Grainger but now saw a small chance to leave word that something was wrong. Grainger couldn’t possibly know where the church key should be hidden. He hadn’t been hiding, watching them all of the time, surely? Michael tried to recall how many birds he had heard call out … and when. Had that been Grainger arriving?

  His idea was worth a risk. He locked the church and then walked purposefully towards the gable where the key was normally hidden. Instead of lodging it in the guttering, however, he
put it on a window-sill. In the dark, Grainger couldn’t see exactly what he was up to, but anyone looking for the church key in daylight, and not finding it where it should be, might well stumble across it, in the new hiding place. They might think it suspicious and examine the church carefully. There was a slim chance they would conclude St Mary’s had been burgled.

  Michael returned to the porch.

  A grassy path led from the church through the graveyard and into some bushes which, Michael guessed, bordered the Frome. By the time they reached the bushes their eyes had adjusted to the murk and he recognised, beyond the dark mass of rhododendron branches, the white bulk of Grainger’s launch.

  ‘Hold it there.’ Grainger spoke in barely more than a whisper but his words carried and they all halted. ‘We can’t have you throwing things into the river, Miss Sadler. Leave what you are carrying here.’

  Isobel put the box on the bank.

  ‘Now, Whiting, board the boat and stand at the prow.’

  Michael did as he was told. He was itching to act but he needed no reminding how terrified Isobel was of the boat-hook and that inhibited him. Grainger manoeuvred Isobel to the stern and, still keeping the boat-hook so that its point rested against her flesh, he reached over and with the twin barrels of the gun pressed a button. The launch’s engine coughed and died. He pressed the button again. The engine stuttered into life.

  He turned to Isobel. ‘Untie that rope, will you?’

  The rope was wound around two mooring poles some ten yards apart. Isobel was made to unwrap first one, then the other. Grainger wedged the boat-hook under the arm that held the gun. That left his other hand free to put the engine into gear. Moving with the current, the boat was soon in the middle of the river.

  Now he put the engine into neutral. He spoke to Isobel. ‘I want you to face forward and put your hands behind your back.’ He waited for her to do so before saying, ‘I am now going to put down the boat-hook and wedge the shotgun just here, by the wheel. Then I’m going to tie your hands. Any sudden movement by either of you, anything not in the script, and I shall use the gun.’

  He waited a moment while he straightened the launch in the river, then laid the boat-hook near his feet and picked up a length of rope which was coiled there. He leaned the gun against the wheelhouse and expertly fastened Isobel’s wrists together. He was very strong and the ropes were fastened tightly. Bending down again he took from the deck a roll of wide, heavy-duty plastic tape, unwound some inches and snapped it off with his teeth. Then he wrapped it over and around the knots he had just tied in the rope binding Isobel’s wrists.

  ‘That should make it a good deal harder for you to fiddle with,’ he said. ‘I have the gun in my hand again. Please move over by the cabin, Miss Sadler, and sit down.’ This time he tied her feet. Again he wound tape around the knots. ‘Stand up and turn again to face the bow.’

  As she stood, Isobel could hear more tape being unwound. Before she realised what Grainger had in mind, his hands came over her head and a strip of tape was slapped across her mouth. Instinctively, she opened her mouth to scream but it was too late. Grainger’s hands went round her head three times, pulling the tape harder so that her lips were firmly stuck together. While she was concentrating on breathing through her nose, Grainger opened the cabin door and pushed her inside. She fell heavily, bruising her thigh, her shoulder and the back of her head. Grainger banged the door shut immediately.

  ‘Now we repeat the process, Mr Whiting. Come back here.’

  Michael had watched, horrified, at Isobel’s treatment from Grainger, his anger rising. But what could he do? The gaping barrels of the shotgun eyed him unblinking. He moved to the back of the launch as Grainger again adjusted the wheel. They had already drifted nearly fifty yards downstream from the church landing. Michael could now see that the launch was also towing a small boat, rather like the skiff Isobel and he had rented. The one Grainger had sunk.

  ‘Turn, and put your hands behind your back.’

  Michael decided this was his moment. While Grainger was trying to tie his hands, with the gun no longer actually in his hand, that was the best opportunity Michael would get. As he held his hands behind his back he kept his fingers spread wide, ready to grab Grainger’s wrist.

  He heard a swift movement behind him and realised late that Grainger was too cunning to expose himself in that way. The twin barrels of the shotgun came hammering down on his head and, before he hit the deck, he passed out.

  14

  A hard dome of glass, shiny with pain. Red blisters bubbling and boiling and exploding noiselessly. Michael’s skull was filled with a heavy, molten, flammable sea. The pain poured out of his ears, beat in waves against the inside of his forehead, squeezed under the base of his cranium at the back. As he came to, as the hot red tide eased, he found it difficult to move. Only after some minutes did Michael grasp that he was tied up. His wrists were fastened behind his back. His ankles were wrapped together equally firmly. Only after what may have been another half an hour, or a week, did he realise that his lips were sealed with some sort of tape. And only then did he remember the blow on his head. In haphazard order he recalled the events—except that he didn’t remember falling. Concussion, he supposed, was like that. It involved some memory loss.

  His eyes had watered and the dried tears caked his cheeks. He grunted and groaned. Slowly he began to appreciate where he was. The bottom of Grainger’s launch. Michael’s right shoulder and arm were sodden with dirty, oily water, cold and smelly. His forehead itched where something sticky had dried—he couldn’t see but guessed it must be congealed blood from the blow to his skull. His cheek lay against a coarse substance and he saw, inches in front of him, the rough interior of the fibreglass shell of the launch. It curved away above him, hard, stained, scuffed with the marks of riverboat life—plastic coloured buoys, cans of grease, wooden boxes, rusty anchors. The sound of water chasing along the hull conveyed two things: he was below the waterline, and the boat was moving at a fair pace. But then he realised the tone of the throttle should have told him that. The whole boat vibrated with a power that only came from a strong engine, fully open.

  The sound of movement, and a sob, very close, surprised him, until his memory, still affected by the blow to his head, reminded him that Isobel’s plight was similar to his own. With difficulty, he manoeuvred on to his back, then on to his other side. It was still dark and although he could make out a couple of windows, high above him, he could see only vague outlines of the other shapes in the cabin. The shadows inside the boat were too deep for him to make out Isobel’s face.

  Michael had no idea how long he had been unconscious or where they were on the river. He wasn’t fully conscious now and, for some time, drifted between sleep and full alertness. Now and then he was attacked by stabs of nausea.

  What was Grainger’s plan, he wondered in his more lucid moments? He dimly remembered that, when moored, the launch had been pointing downstream. Did that mean Grainger was heading for the coast? He supposed that made sense. In a launch the size of Grainger’s, they couldn’t go very much further upstream. But if they were going downstream were they going out to sea? And, if so, what then? With a head that felt it had grenades exploding inside it, he couldn’t begin to guess.

  He thought back to his trip on this same river with Isobel. Including stops at Quarr Abbey and that pub in Wool, it had taken them about five hours to get to Wareham. In Grainger’s launch they could do the journey in—what, four hours? Three and a half? If his memory served him right, the Frome at Wareham issued into the same complex of waterways as Poole, and there was a long estuarine channel before they actually reached the open sea. Another hour or two. At least it should be daylight by then.

  The fact that Michael was thinking meant he was, in some sense, recovering. He turned his attention to the rope that bound him. He was only now beginning to take in Grainger’s cleverness in covering the knots in the rope with tape. Michael could just feel its slipperiness with t
he tips of his fingers. Grainger was a strong man—he seemed at times almost wholly made up of long bones and stringy sinews—and he had tied Michael’s feet and hands very securely. Without the tape, however, it would probably have been possible, given time, for Michael to find one of the ends of rope binding his feet and then gradually dislodge the knots. Michael couldn’t feel the end of the rope under the tape. For a long time, he couldn’t even find the edge of the tape, so that he could start to unwind it.

  It must have been a full twenty minutes before he found the join. He was groaning in frustration long before that. Then, for the next five or six minutes, he worried at the tape, trying to wedge his fingernail under the join, to dislodge it so that he could get enough free to pull on it. In the confined space of the boat it was difficult, even painful, to manoeuvre. Ridges of fibreglass ran like ribs around the hull and often cut into his arms when he moved, so that he occasionally had to stop. Nor could he wriggle too much. The launch wasn’t large and if he moved too suddenly Grainger would be able to detect it.

  Eventually, however, after what must have been three-quarters of an hour, he freed enough of the tape to pull with two fingers. Slowly it came away. He unwound it halfway around his ankles … three-quarters … the whole way. Suddenly the tape came away in his hands. Thank God! He reached with his fingers for the rope.

  No! What he found almost made him weep. There was another layer of tape. Now he had to start all over again, searching for the join, prising it up with his nail, unwinding it.

  While he was struggling, Michael suddenly detected that it was getting light. He could see bushes going by on the bank outside and he could now make out Isobel’s features. He could see her frightened eyes above the tape around her mouth as she watched him struggle. The fact that they could not speak to each other made their situation more pathetic. If they could have talked they could have shared their misfortune. As it was, they were each locked away, alone, with their fear and their inability to hit back at Grainger.