by Alex Archer
She didn’t want to go home, not yet at least.
That was where she’d last seen him. That was where his final words had been in anger.
She wanted time to think.
“Who called the ambulance?”
“A woman who saw the car.”
“Do you know who she is? Can I talk to her? I need to know if he said anything....”
“I’m sorry, the call was anonymous. If it helps, I don’t think she would have been able to get to your father, or his car. So I don’t believe there’s anything she could tell you.”
Awena wanted to scream and shout, to demand answers that she knew would never come. The police had already decided this was an accident. They had all the answers they needed to make him just another unfortunate statistic. She wasn’t prepared to let it be rubber-stamped like that; she wanted to know more. She wanted to know what had really happened.
Because if he had gone over the cliff and it was her fault...
“It may be a few days before the wreckage can be moved. Specialist equipment will be needed. I’d suggest you don’t drive home that way. Seeing it could be quite distressing.”
Geraint nodded.
“We have some of his things we recovered from inside the vehicle.” The policewoman lifted a plastic bag that was too large for the meager contents—a set of house keys, his wallet, some loose change and most importantly his notebook.
* * *
AWENA’S EYES LIT up at the sight of the journal.
Geraint didn’t like that look. He’d seen it before in his father’s eyes.
Suddenly it was as though nothing else mattered.
She took the bag off the woman and turned her back on her father and brother without a second glance and headed toward the door.
Geraint made his apologies and headed after her. What nobody seemed to realize was that he’d lost his father as well as her, and he’d been the one who had fought with him. That would never change. He replayed the fight over and over in his head, but all he could think of was how the sword had burned in his father’s hand and all of those stupid stories he used to invent about those treasures he wasted his life on.
Tears tracked down his cheeks as he left the mortuary.
Awena had insisted on taking her car rather than his. She was in the driver’s seat waiting for him. He climbed into the passenger’s seat. He couldn’t see the notebook. He didn’t know whether to be pleased she wasn’t already engrossed in their father’s madness or frightened by the fact she had so expertly hidden it from his sight.
They drove home in silence.
It was breakfast time and all either of them wanted to do was sleep.
Chapter 26
It was easier to find the house than she’d expected.
Garin’s directions were good.
The winding country road had been eerily empty for most of the journey. For the past four or five miles she’d seen an occasional tractor that had pulled over onto the grass verge to allow her to pass, and that was it. It wasn’t exactly the best terrain for a beast like the Porche to handle, but it wasn’t quite a dusty track, either.
She swung off the road and onto a perfectly maintained driveway with well-manicured strips of grass on either side and elegant topiaries that had obviously been lavished with some serious tender loving care. The drive ran over one hundred and fifty meters, rising higher up the mountain, before the house came into view.
Built into the hillside the front door was effectively set into the central story, with the garage built into the hillside below. Annja pulled the Porsche to a stop beside a white saloon car that looked in need of a clean. It didn’t look like an unmarked police car, but of course that was the point of stripping the decals and lights, wasn’t it? It was unlikely it was police, though, as they’d come in a squad car to deliver news of a death, wouldn’t they?
She got out of the car, locking it with the remote on the key fob, and took a glance at where she had come from. The reality of just how high that winding road had climbed sank in; from here she looked down on a great stretch of the valley that felt miles away. “Can I help you?” a rough voice called to her from a balcony.
She hadn’t seen the man come outside. “Sorry,” she called back.
She’d rehearsed what she was going to say on the way over, but faced with the grief-stricken young man the words seemed trite. What had Garin said his name was? Geraint. “My name’s Annja Creed.”
“What can I do for you, Miss Creed?”
“I work for an American television show, Chasing History’s Monsters. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Anyway, I was hoping to do a feature on your father’s work.”
“My God,” the man said, shaking his head, obviously unable to believe what he was hearing. He pushed away from the balcony railing. “He’s only been dead a day and you vultures are circling already?”
This was the part she had to be careful with. She needed to play it right. That meant lying her pretty little heart out. “He’s dead? I—I don’t know what to say...I had no idea. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Wait there,” he said. His tone shifted. “I’ll be right down.”
She walked up to the door. When it opened a moment later, Annja was struck by how familiar the man on the threshold appeared. He held out his hand for her to take, and said, “I see you’ve changed your car.”
Annja felt her heart skip a beat. “How did you...?” she started, wondering how he could possibly know she’d ditched the hire car for Garin’s bright yellow Porsche.
“We were coming over the bridge at the same time.” He smiled sheepishly. “Some faces are hard to forget.”
Annja felt the heat rise in her cheeks. The moment he said it she remembered the red-haired guy who’d smiled at her as they queued at the tollbooths.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know that mine isn’t one of them.” He grinned. “Please, come in. I’m sorry I was so short up there.” He nodded toward the balcony.
“I really don’t want to intrude.”
“It’s fine, honestly. Truth be told, we weren’t particularly close.”
It was a strange thing to tell a complete stranger, but he was obviously doing everything he could to keep any emotions he had over his father’s death in check.
She followed him inside.
There were no obvious traces of his father’s interests decorating the downstairs. There were plenty of pictures of Geraint and his sister, but only one of the sister with Owen Llewellyn, looking considerably less manic than the man she’d seen. Perhaps Geraint was telling the truth, after all, and it wasn’t one big happy family.
Even so, it would have to be one hell of a disagreement for him not to care.
“My sister, Awena, is in the bath. We just had to go and identify his body,” he said. “It was hard on her. She was close to him.”
“Sorry. This really isn’t the right time. I could come back—”
“No, please, stay. It’s Awena you really need to talk to. She was far more interested in what he has wasted his life on than I was. She won’t be long, but I’d rather just let her soak for a while. Can I get you something? A drink? And you can tell me all about your show, how does that sound?”
“Coffee, please, and great. Amazing place to live,” Annja said, her gaze sweeping around the kitchen, meaning everything, not just the hilltop house.
“I can’t take all the credit for it. My grandparents were comfortable, and the house has been in the family for a long time. I’ve just had to make sure that we didn’t lose it while my father was off gallivanting around the country chasing fairy tales and hemorrhaging money.”
Annja offered a slight smile. “I’m familiar with the affliction,” she said. “I mean, I work on a show called Chasing History’s Monsters. How co
uld I not be? Your father must have thought it was worthwhile.”
“Oh, he did. He was thoroughly obsessed with the hunt. He came back the other day, the first time we had seen him in months, maybe even a year, and he comes walking in as if he’d only been gone a day. That was what he was like. He was all smiles, expecting us to be happy to see him, whenever he showed up. Hell, I think he expected me to give him a pat on the head because he’d finally found something.”
“He had?” she asked, not wanting to show too much interest.
“Oh, something and nothing,” he said. There was a change in his expression, as if he had suddenly realized that he should be more circumspect. She didn’t push it.
“I’m sure that it was important to him.”
“Everything was important to him. Well, everything except real life. So are you over here for long?” he asked, changing the topic. She needed to be careful now. She didn’t want to seem like she was fishing.
“A couple of weeks’ vacation. I’m finally getting to see some of the places I’ve always wanted to. A couple of them might even make an interesting segment on the show.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have thought that there was much here that’d interest an American audience. It’s not exactly teeming with life.”
“Maybe not, but it’s teeming with history. I’ve always wanted to do a feature on the Roman ruins in Caerleon, for instance, and the castle at Caerphilly looks pretty interesting, not to mention that beautiful cathedral in St. Davids.” Even as she reeled off the place names she realized she should have been keeping her mouth shut. She’d just named the sites of the whetstone robbery and the curate’s murder in the same breath; it went beyond coincidence, and if he knew anything about what his father had been up to she’d tipped her hand. There wasn’t so much as a flicker from him. The locations meant nothing to him. Maybe it was more his sister’s bag, as he’d said.
“True, I guess if there’s one thing we’ve got more of than America, it’s history.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that crack, but Annja didn’t rise to it.
She just smiled, relieved to hear the sound of movement upstairs.
“That’ll be Awena. I’ll let her know you want to chat about Dad. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”
She heard footsteps on the stairs, and pushed herself out of her seat, ready to spin more lies as a woman in a towel came into the kitchen.
“Oh...I didn’t know anyone was here. Geraint, you could have warned me,” she said, flustered and trying to cover herself up.
“Awena, this is Annja Creed. She works on an American TV show. She was looking for Dad. She wanted to talk to him about his quest. She hadn’t heard...”
“No reason why you should have heard, Miss Creed,” the young woman said, adjusting the towel like it was a layer of armor. “But I’m sure that you will understand why we aren’t interested in being part of a program right now. People ridiculed our father during his lifetime, so do you mind explaining why you think anyone would be more interested now that he’s dead? Or does his being dead make it sexy TV or something?”
“There’s no need to be rude, sis,” Geraint said.
“It’s okay.” Annja smiled. “I understand, honestly. If I’d known I wouldn’t have called. It’s horribly intrusive and terrible timing. But believe me, there are people out there interested in your father’s work, even if he didn’t know that. I’d love the chance to do a segment on his quest, especially as your brother suggested he found something recently.”
“I think you should leave.”
Annja nodded. “Let me give you my card in case you’d like to talk about this in the future. I really am sorry for your loss.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Miss Creed. It’s unlikely. This is a very private thing. For you it might be a story, but for us it is our father’s life.”
“I understand,” Annja said.
After no more than the briefest of goodbyes, she headed out to the Porsche.
By the time she had slid behind the wheel the door to the house had been closed.
She could feel the woman looking at her through the frosted window.
Chapter 27
“Why the hell did you let her in the house?” Awena demanded.
She stood at the door, watching the canary-yellow Porsche drive away through the frosted pane of glass in the center of it. She flicked the business card against her fingernails. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that this American would call on us today of all days? I mean, it’s not as if Dad’s work was common knowledge.”
“She seemed nice,” Geraint said.
“She seemed nice?” Awena echoed. “Really? All it takes is a pretty face and a smile and you’ll roll over hoping she’ll scratch your belly?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, so tell me this—how did she know where we lived?”
“I don’t know. It’s no secret that we live in this area, though. All she had to do was ask someone in the village to give her directions.”
Awena was not convinced. Something wasn’t right even though she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
“Fine, then why today?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say that I don’t believe in coincidence. What else did she talk about?”
“Some of the places she was checking out, locations for possible programs. Caerleon, Caerphilly, St. Davids.”
Caerleon. She felt a shiver run up her spine. Not good. Not good at all. “I’m not going to fight with you. I’m tired. I just wish you’d think...how could you tell her Dad had found something? Were you showing off for her?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Look, I know you hate me for sending Dad away...I know you blame me for his death...but it wasn’t my fault. He attacked me. You saw that crazy burning sword.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not sorry I told him to get out.”
It was hard to argue against that and Awena knew it, but she was certain that their father hadn’t intended to hurt him. It was a fine distinction, but there was a marked difference between attacking someone and trying to prove a point, and that’s what Owen Llewellyn had been trying to do, wasn’t it? To prove that he’d succeeded after failing so many times before?
Surely Geraint would understand that, given time.
“Okay, let’s not fall out over this,” was all she said. “I’m hoping you can do me a favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“An illegal kind of favor,” she remarked. “The kind I really shouldn’t ask you to do. I wouldn’t ask, but I’ve got this feeling...and if I don’t do something about it, it’s going to drive me nuts.”
Her brother looked at her skeptically. “What do you need?”
“A woman rang for an ambulance. She saw the crash.”
“And?”
“And I want to speak to her.”
“Surely the police—”
“The police aren’t interested. It was an anonymous call and they seem to think that’s perfectly normal.”
“But you don’t?”
“I don’t know. But now a woman turns up here asking questions about what Dad was doing.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find the number of the woman who made the call.”
“Do you have any idea of what you’re asking?”
“Can you do it?”
“Maybe, but it’s not going to be easy, and if I get caught, there will be real trouble. You know that, right?”
“Please.” That was all it took. Just one little word.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “But only because I love you, not because I feel guilty.” He smi
led wanly and headed upstairs to the small bedroom he used as an office whenever he worked from home. Maybe he would be able to do it, maybe he wouldn’t, but at least he was going try. That was something.
As soon as she heard his office door close she headed across the landing to her father’s study, so that she could study his journals in more detail. The answers were in there, she was sure of that. It would tell her about how he found the sword, and why it burned the way it did when she held it.
An hour passed without her even realizing it.
There were comments in her father’s working notebook that meant nothing to her, many of them written in a scrawl she could barely read, and plenty of diagrams without any sort of name or label, but there were also several mentions of Gerald of Wales and his final resting place without actually saying where it was.
She retrieved one of the volumes from the safe hoping that between the two she’d find a clue as to where it might be. Even as she turned carefully through the brittle pages something nagged away at her, something her father had told her, but she could not dredge it up from the depths of her memory.
The first reference she found seemed to be saying that the whereabouts of Gerald’s mortal remains remained unknown, but she didn’t stop looking. Finally, the second reference she found contradicted the first, suggesting Gerald’s remains were believed to be in the cathedral at St. Davids.
Awena froze.
The woman had named three locations—Caerleon, Caerphilly and St. Davids. Two of the three were inextricably linked with the treasures.
“You in there?” Geraint called from the other side of the door. He didn’t knock.
She had not consciously closed it. Or at least she didn’t think she had. Geraint wouldn’t come in uninvited, and even then it would be reluctantly.
She slipped the notebook in the drawer before answering him.
