The Deepest Grave: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series Book 6 (Fiona Griffiths 6)

by Harry Bingham

  And I can’t betray Devine, because (a) why would I? I’ve got my hostages and my cash. And (b) he can always demonstrate that I accepted five million dollars from him in illicit cash, which would put me into prison right alongside him.

  A thieves’ compact.

  It’s late now. Gone ten o’clock. The day’s been warm, even close. A damp heaviness in the air.

  Mordred gestures out beyond the window.

  ‘OK. Let’s get them. They’re not far.’

  I ask to borrow a jacket. Any actual jacket he’s got is way too big, but he finds me a fleece. It’s still far too big, but I roll up the sleeves and wear it like a mini-dress, with my skirt poking out at the bottom.

  It looks nice, actually. Almost cool.

  Devine is in cargo pants and T-shirt. He reads a text on his phone and laughs quietly to himself. He slings his gun from a belt-loop and, ever cautious, takes Caledfwlch too. If any police do burst in here, he doesn’t want them to find a Dark Age sword on his kitchen table.

  We go outside.

  It’s dark now. Still not absolutely dark, though, because we’re only a few days past the solstice. A paling lingers in the west, where the sun mourns its own departure.

  Devine’s four-by-four. A farm vehicle. Dirty, not glossy.

  As we walk over to it, I point upwards. Say, ‘Arthur saw that. The sky at solstice. Looked up and felt the same way we do.’

  Devine doesn’t answer. Tells me to get in the car.

  I do so. Watch him stride the yard under this dying, yellowy light. He makes one last call, glancing at me.

  I leave my door open.

  Why is Devine on his phone now, of all times? And why does he look at me like that?

  Those questions might have any number of answers, but it occurs to me that one of them is very ugly indeed.

  I’ve no idea what is happening out there on the phone, but without moving my hands too much, I slip off my belt. That same fabric tie whose bow so bothered Devine earlier.

  Slip it off. Run one end through my hand. Through the sweat on the inside of my elbow. The dirt on my sandaled feet.

  Devine finishes with his call. Comes over to the car. He gets in. Closes his door.

  As he does so, I drop my belt into the footwell, with its now sweaty, dirty trailing end hanging out on the ground. I close my door over the belt. Grin an ‘OK’ at Devine.

  He lets in the clutch and we set off.

  Mordred and Gwenhwfach journeying to Brocéliande.

  51

  Farm track and field. Pothole and stone.

  We drive around for maybe twenty minutes. Sometimes on proper public roads. Mostly on farm tracks or just bumping along the edge of some field. Except on the roads, we have our lights off completely.

  I seriously doubt if the place we’re going to is as far as he’s making it seem. I think he just wants to make sure I’m disoriented. Also to verify that no one’s following.

  They’re not.

  In the back of the car, Caledfwlch jolts and bounces. It feels like the only real thing right now. The only dependable thing.

  The car stops.

  We open our doors.

  Air blows through trees.

  Something feels wrong. Askew.

  The air, I think. There’s going to be a storm. It’s been building the whole day. There was something in that dying, yellowy light that spoke of something seeking release.

  Devine comes round to my side and puts his hand on my arm.

  Get your fucking hand off me, you bastard.

  I don’t say that, but I do think it. Or not think, even. Just an instinctive flick of rage.

  I get out.

  Devine has left Caledfwlch in the car, but his machine pistol is in his weapon hand now. A nasty piece of kit, that. An assassin’s piece.

  My belt has fallen to the ground below my feet. Devine doesn’t notice it. I hardly do.

  The night is close to fully dark now. There’s a whisper of light from the car dashboard, a little glow from the eastern sky, where the lights of Sheffield burn.

  Trees.

  We’re on a field margin running alongside an area of woodland. How far it extends, I don’t know, but the whisper of air through leaves is all around. A smell of green. Of exhaling earth.

  Somewhere still distant, I hear the first growl of thunder. Lightning flickers over gritstone. Sparks on a giant anvil.

  I feel a little lurch of panic. The bite of a fear-rat at my stomach wall.

  Devine is busy with some night vision gear. Not just binoculars, but a headset. The sort that leaves you with your hands free.

  He never releases his grip on his gun, but adjusts his headset one-and-a-half handed.

  For a short while, he scans the forest in front of us, the field behind. He’s watching for anyone following. Anyone at all.

  There’s no one.

  No threat. No SO15. No highly armed guys with hi-tech weaponry and nightscopes.

  I was utterly explicit with Jones about that. I said, ‘The hostages will be hidden from view. This guy has top-level skills in concealment and evasion, acquired in the military and honed in the private sector. If you bring in an assault team too early, you will lose the hostages. Do you understand that? You will lose them and you will lose me.’

  That theory was sound, but I’m getting uneasy about the possible implications.

  Why does Devine even need a gun? If we’re here to release hostages, he doesn’t need a gun.

  He finishes his surveillance, then just says, ‘Let’s go.’

  We walk along the field margin to a place where the hedge thins to almost nothing.

  ‘In here.’

  He flicks his gun at me. A gesture of command. That snub little barrel narrowing to a single black O.

  I say, ‘Brocéliande? It’s in there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The hostages are there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Very quietly I say, ‘You’re not letting us go, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  That doesn’t make any sense. If – when – Dad releases his information to the world, then Devine’s world collapses in an instant.

  It doesn’t make any sense, unless . . .

  ‘You’ve sold the sword?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That text. The one you read just before we left your house.’

  ‘Correct. That was the confirmation coming through.’

  ‘How much?’

  He hesitates briefly, but shrugs away the doubt. ‘Seventy-eight million dollars. It’s an exceptional piece.’

  I’m shocked. It just hadn’t occurred to me that things could move that fast. Perhaps they had pre-identified buyers. I guess they must have done.

  ‘Tests on the sword. Wouldn’t all that take longer?’

  He grins, teeth fierce in the darkness. ‘The buyer has conducted some tests, yes. But your friends and colleagues in the police pretty much did the authentication for us.’

  As they always planned. As they always intended.

  I even helped them, that’s the truth. By whipping up enthusiasm online, by spreading the word inside the police force, I helped bring about Jones’s ‘THEFT OF EXCALIBUR’ press release. It wasn’t even an error on my part, whipping up that enthusiasm. Their version of laying a trail involved multiple murder. I had to let them know that their clues were being correctly read and interpreted or other people might have died along the way.

  I want to understand more, but Devine’s pistol flicks again, more impatiently this time.

  I do as I’m told.

  We enter the wood, ducking under and through some low branches. Hedge maple, I think.

  I can’t see any path. I don’t think there is one. But Devine – whose night vision stuff enables him to see where I can’t – just grabs my top and steers me.

  I stumble forwards. Invisible sticks and briars tangle with me as I move, and my bare calves feel their snatch. Devine isn’t particularly rough
with me, but he’s not gentle either.

  He’s about a million times stronger than I am.

  He can see where I can’t.

  He has a ton of combat experience.

  And he’s armed.

  I count through my various options for escape. I come up with nothing at all – but I also keep bumping up against the whole damn reason I’m here alone in the first place. Devine has his hostages somewhere where we can’t find them. Even if I somehow managed to escape right now, we mightn’t be much closer to rescuing the two people we most need to find.

  I think I’m walking to my death.

  The thunder is closer now. The lightning. Blue fire between trees.

  As we get further into the wood, the undergrowth thickens. Devine is wearing boots and tough utility trousers. He just marches through whatever there is without caring. Me, I have bare legs, and Devine just shoves me through whatever obstruction lies in front of me. Once or twice I fall, hoping that Devine will lean down to pick me up. Will allow his attention to flicker away from his pistol.

  No such luck. When I fall, he steps backwards not forwards. Tells me, curtly, to get up.

  His tone says – and I believe it – that if I fool around too much, he’ll just put a bullet in my head and carry my corpse to Brocéliande, wherever and whatever it is.

  I stop fooling around.

  After maybe five minutes, we reach a huge oak tree. Massive. The sort of thing that three or four of me standing in a circle couldn’t link arms around.

  I stand at its base, looking up. Crooked arms outlined against this flickering sky.

  Devine has the pistol trained on me, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move.

  I say, ‘Brocéliande. We’re here.’

  He nods.

  I stare at the trunk of the oak, but it looks solid, impenetrable.

  Devine laughs.

  Moves away from the trunk. Pulls out a torch. Searches the ground till he finds what he wants. Then takes something like a long metal key from a pocket.

  Torchlight. This oak tree. The flicker of lightning.

  Somewhere, far off, a dog barks once and is swiftly silent. We both stare out at the night, but any invisible policemen remain strictly invisible, more’s the pity.

  And then – he pulls up a drain cover. It’s one of those covers that gives you space to lay your own chosen insert on top. Paving slabs, or whatever else. Devine has packed his cover with earth from the forest floor. Laid twigs and leaves and whatever else over it, so even though I was at one point almost standing on the thing, I didn’t see it. Wouldn’t have seen it, even in broad daylight.

  I don’t honestly know if a shoulder-to-shoulder police search of this woodland would have found this place. I’m guessing not.

  Devine lays the cover aside, leaving me to stare down the hole in this dark earth.

  The gun flicks at me and at the hole.

  When I peer in, Devine’s torch reveals a metal ladder stretching down.

  ‘There used to be a quarry here,’ Devine says. ‘Just stone for the farm, nothing commercial. Then Dad decided to cover it over. No reason, really, just we weren’t using it any more. We thought it would be fun to make a cave though. We had an old Dutch barn that wanted demolishing so we broke it up. Used the steels to make joists. A bit of sheeting over the top. Filled everything in. That was years back now. No one even knows the place is here. These days, I’m the only person in the whole world who knows about it.’

  I set my foot on the ladder. Top rung only. Bum on the earth. Lightning slowly fading from the sky. The first fat plop of rain that I note vaguely, but don’t really feel.

  I feel limp and failed and useless.

  I say, ‘Mordred? Your sword. Can I see it, please? See it properly, before you . . . before . . .’

  Before you kill me and Kay and Katie and fuck off to Costa Del Somewhere with your money.

  Devine says, ‘Yes,’ but his tone is impatient.

  The hole. The darkness. This summer storm.

  I put my hands to the ladder and climb slowly down.

  52

  An iron ladder. A rocky floor.

  But a tiny space only. A rough wooden wall blocks my way. A heavily padlocked door, low enough that even I’ll have to crouch to go through it.

  Devine follows me down.

  This is a krav maga moment, of course.

  A narrow space. Hard walls. The opportunity for a surprise attack.

  But—

  Devine.

  The gun.

  My own limp state.

  I’ve no more got the spring and force needed to attack my captor, than I have the ability to jump to the moon or overfly the stars.

  I sit.

  Devine unlocks the door, eyes on me more than the padlock. Gun steady in his right hand, even as his left fumbles with the key.

  Padlock off.

  The door isn’t properly hung and needs a kick.

  Devine moves to do so, but first I ask, ‘Do you ever feel sorry for people? In combat or, I don’t know, things like this.’

  ‘Combat? No.’

  That’s a half answer if ever I heard one.

  ‘And now?’

  Devine says, ‘I’ll make it gentle. This isn’t personal. None of this is personal.’

  I think, it probably felt quite personal to Gaynor Charteris. Personal enough to Oakeshott and Gheerbrant too.

  And all of a sudden, their presences blossom here in this little rocky chamber. Gheerbrant and Oakeshott certainly, but mostly Gaynor Charteris.

  The tattered stump of her neck. The bloodily tutting head that she carries in her lap, squidging red into her sensible tweed skirt.

  I feel a rush of affection. Love, even. Companionship. A happy-sad, sweet-sour moment that I could live in for ever.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

  I don’t know if I’m thanking Devine for his promise or Charteris for her comfortable, tweedy presence.

  Both probably. I think both.

  I stand up – too fast – bumping my head stupidly on the low ceiling, but not minding. Devine boots the door hard. It staggers open. Devine’s gun pushes me through.

  A quarry. Rough stone. Damp earth.

  Water pooling in the uneven bottom.

  Dead grass and sticks and other reminders that this place was once open to the air.

  A darkly seeping ledge with food, water and other supplies. In several places, the dark shine of oak roots, sinuous and dark. This is Brocéliande after all. A prison hidden in the bowels of an oak tree.

  There’s light too. Enough to see by. The blue glow of an LED camping lamp sitting on a ledge of stone.

  And Kay.

  And Katie.

  Both in one piece. Not hurt, not bruised. Frightened women with frightened eyes.

  They’re both wearing jeans, with blankets in a military grey pulled over their shoulders.

  They’re chained. Kay’s left wrist secured to Katie’s right via a chain that passes through a heavy iron ring bolted to the rock.

  That puzzles me briefly – why chain them when they’re already captive? Then realise he didn’t want them jumping him as he came through the door.

  Their immobility is unhelpful, but hey-diddle-diddle. We can’t have everything we want.

  I say, ‘Hi, Kay. Hi, Katie.’

  Then bite Devine as hard as I can in his gun-carrying arm.

  53

  Biting.

  That sounds a bit girly, of course. Scratching, biting, pulling hair. Playground stunts that only girls ever pull. Girls with tears and bunches and grubby knees.

  But there’s playground biting and real biting.

  My fighting instructor, Lev, once told me that the human jaw can exert as much as a hundred kilos of force. I slightly doubt that my own pearly whites can inflict that much pressure, but they’re still handy. The trick – another of Lev’s much-reiterated nuggets – is to bite with the molars not the incisors. You get double or q
uadruple the amount of force, and the victim’s area of muscle damage is that much greater.

  ‘Take the biggest bite you can. Bite hard. And don’t stop. The more your man struggles, the more hurt you do.’

  Wise advice.

  I bite into Devine’s bicep. Feel the gush and taste of blood. He yanks the arm away, or tries to, but Lev is right. The movement actually helps me get a better grip. Provokes more tearing, more injury.

  But it’s not about the bicep. It’s about the gun. The battle for the weapon.

  When I launched into my bite, I grabbed for his gun-holding hand.

  In that first, sweet second of shock, I felt his hand loosen. I thought, for one lovely moment, that I could wrestle the gun off him.

  But no such luck. The guy is easily twice as strong as me, maybe more. Even with my two hands grappling with one of his, I can’t pull the thing away.

  But, in the fight, the trigger gets squeezed. I’m not sure who did it or quite how it happened, but there was a short burst of fire.

  A burst, not a shot.

  So I yank hard on Devine’s own trigger finger and the gun fires again. A burst of bullets.

  A spray.

  A scatter.

  A steel rain.

  Then nothing. An empty gun. A hammer closing on emptiness. The sound of uselessness.

  We’re left with a smell of cordite, or whatever cartridges use these days. The smell of explosive and an echo that lasts forever.

  We were pointing away from Kay and Katie through the tussle, but the chamber here is small enough and rocky. I don’t know what damage could be done by ricochets alone.

  I want to look, but don’t get the chance. With his free hand, Devine hits me.

  He hits me in the head, so hard that the world goes black for a moment. I see stars. Stagger back.

  Devine, panting hard, drops his pistol and looks black violence at me. Dabs at his damaged arm, inspecting the damage.

  ‘That thing I told you?’ he says. ‘About making it gentle? Well fuck that.’

  Still watching me, Devine finds a handkerchief, or something of that sort, in his pocket. Ties a crude bandage over his bicep, wanting to stop the bleeding, I guess.

  He’s wondering quite how to play this next bit. He’d quite like to kill me right now this minute, but the maths doesn’t look quite as simple as it did.