“You say that as if you’re going to anyway.”
“That’s silly. I told you, I just want to talk. If you don’t want to come to the village with me is there somewhere we can go where they won’t find us?”
They were standing by the door to the storage space which ran underneath the house. Jenna had never been inside but she knew it was there.
“There?”
“There?” Guy repeated.
“It’s locked,” Jenna said as she tried the door.
He tried the handle. “No it’s not. It’s just a bit stuck. I don’t suppose anyone comes down here very often.” He pushed his shoulder against it and the door opened.
He felt for the switch and turned the light on before closing the door behind them.
The room was bigger than he had imagined, filled with the clutter of someone who had not moved house for many years.
“No one’s going to find us down here. Let’s talk,” he began.
“They say you are involved with those men’s deaths, you know, the man I didn’t know was my father and the man who was supposed to have killed him but didn’t.”
“I didn’t kill them. Either of them.”
“Didn’t you? They seem to think you did.”
“They? Who are these ‘they’ you keep talking about?”
“The police, some part of the police anyway. They say you’re involved in both killings. Now they say you’re coming after me.”
“They do, do they? Why do they think that?”
“They didn’t say really, though they said something about you being related to me, a cousin? Something like that. I’d almost given up listening by then.”
“They told you who my father was?”
“Garfield? Was that it? Some name like that anyway.”
“His name was Barford, but he changed it. And yes, Warwick Eden was my uncle and, yes, I suppose his estate would have come to me as his next of kin if you hadn’t turned up.”
“But I did. So it won’t.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with his death or the other man or the disappearance of the witness. They’ll tell you I did, but I didn’t. And I know they’re all saying I must want to get rid of you so I inherit everything but it’s not true. You have to believe me.”
“Then why have you followed me halfway around Europe?”
“I’ve never wanted to hurt you. I just want to talk. To get to know you. We have a lot in common, you know.”
“I suppose we are cousins,” she said doubtfully.
Guy nodded and took her hand in his. “We don’t need to get lawyers involved, do we? We might get to know each other, like each other even.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know, yet. But I think you should give me a chance. Get to know me. I know you are serious and intelligent, not to mention beautiful.”
She could not believe that Guy was flirting with her; more than flirting with her, he was coming on to her as though she might be interested in him.
She looked around her for somewhere she could sit. There were old tea chests and broken garden chairs, some garden implements and coils of cables, but there was nothing obvious for her to sit on, when she saw two old metal boxes. She extracted her hand from his and sat down.
Guy took that as a sign of encouragement and tried to move another chest next to hers. “That’s bloody heavy,” he said after he had failed to shift it more than a few inches. “I wonder what’s in it.”
“Probably none of your business, or mine come to that.” Jenna was beginning to regret getting herself into this situation.
She had left the veranda to be alone so she could process the knowledge they had given her about her grandfather and her heritage. She had had no need to hear more. So she had left. As she looked at Guy trying to open the trunk she knew she should try to leave.
“Look, Guy, I’m not really comfortable with this. I need to get back.” She had no idea why she had let him take her into this storeroom.
“No. Stay here, I just want to see what’s in here,” he said, as he concentrated on trying to lift the heavy lid.
“Why? You brought me in here to talk to me, didn’t you? So talk to me.”
“Shut up.”
“I beg your pardon! Look, Guy or whatever your name really is, I want to go.”
But he did not answer her. He was staring into the chest he had finally managed to open. “Fuck.”
She barely heard his awed exclamation as she tried to work out how she could run past him, open the door and escape before he could stop her.
“Fuck!” he repeated more loudly.
“What is it?”
“I don’t believe it!”
Jenna peered around Guy and glimpsed something shiny. “What is it?” she repeated.
Guy didn’t answer as he slammed the lid shut. He was concentrating on another box. They weren’t the same but he was hoping it might contain something similar. He prised it open. “Shit! This one’s just some old books and a canvas bag.”
Jenna was torn between her need to escape into the open air and her curiosity as to what was in the boxes.
Her curiosity won.
“Come on, what’s in them? Are you going to tell me or not?”
“Not. There’s nothing in them, just a load of old papers.”
“That wasn’t nothing. It was shiny. What was it?”
Guy closed the lid.
He had seen the gold, the coins and the jewels.
He had no idea how that sort of treasure came to be stored in chests underneath the house of an old woman.
For the first time, he wondered whether he had lost control of his fate. These were things he had not foreseen, had not planned for. These boxes full of unexpected treasure, these people, Jenna, the woman in yellow on the boat; none of them were in his carefully worked-out plans.
And he wished he could remember where he had seen that man on the veranda before.
“What was it? Tell me,” Jenna asked again.
Before he had time to speak a voice from the door answered her question.
“It was gold.”
Pat had found them.
Chapter 33: Guy’s Endgame Concludes
“Guy Cliffe I presume,” Pat said as she opened the cellar door wide.
Without waiting for his answer she turned and called out, “I’ve found her!”
As Diane, Anne and their unwanted guests appeared at the top of the stairs she added, “Come on down. She’s fine. And she has company.”
Within seconds the room was crowded. Jenna felt silly; she should never have left the safety of the veranda, she should not have allowed Guy to talk to her, she should have screamed or in some way alerted them to his presence.
She had begun to think he might be as dangerous as Anne had suggested.
“Has he threatened you?” Anne asked.
“I haven’t. No, honestly, I haven’t,” Guy answered for Jenna. “Why would I threaten her?”
“I can think of any number of reasons,” Pat said brusquely.
“He didn’t. Not really.” Jenna didn’t want to appear to be on her cousin’s side but she felt she had to be honest.
“Not really?” Pat prompted for more information.
“Actually he came on to me, you know, flirting.” She glanced at Guy who was staring at the man, Fergal, who had known so much about her and her family. “Look, he said he only wants to talk to me and I believe him.”
“You know who he is?” Pat asked.
“Of course I do. He’s Guy Cliffe, my cousin. He’s been trying to meet up with me for days, though I have to say he’s not been entirely honest. He did pretend to be someone called Kevin for a while, but he has admitted who he really is.”
Guy did not appear t
o be listening and said nothing to justify himself. He finally stopped staring at Fergal when Pat spoke to him directly. “I think perhaps, Guy, you should explain what you’re doing here, in my house, poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” She thought it important that Jenna understood Guy was not on her side, and was most certainly not to be trusted.
Still Guy did not say a word.
“Jenna, this man kept Diane prisoner for weeks and has also, undoubtedly, murdered at least two, perhaps three, times. I suggest you come over here to me and we will go upstairs together. Has he suggested you go somewhere together?”
Jenna nodded.
“And you honestly think he means you no harm! You’re more naïve than I imagined.” Diane’s voice was scathing.
“He told me you’d say all those things about him. He also told me he didn’t kill anyone.”
“For Pete’s sake, he would say that wouldn’t he! Come on, Jenna. Come with me.” Diane held out her hand.
But Jenna did not take it. “What’s all this stuff doing here?” she asked Pat.
“Stuff?” asked Pat, stalling to give herself more time to think of an answer that would seem both reasonable and innocent.
“Stuff,” Jenna said firmly. “Coins, money, jewellery. Stuff.”
Skye wondered if she was the only one who had caught the warning frown Pat threw in Diane’s direction.
“That’s a perfectly reasonable question, but it is one I will not be answering in present company. It has nothing whatsoever to do with you, Jenna, or you, Guy, or, for that matter, with anyone but myself. Now, come with me, out of this cold, dark room, back into the sunshine.”
In the two weeks that her face and name had been splashed over the newspapers and her life had been torn apart on social media and on radio phone-ins Jenna had wanted to escape back to her quiet life in Devon. She had been brought to this house where she felt she had been practically held prisoner because Anne Hill had said this man, Guy, was a danger to her. Pat had said he was involved in at least two murders but he had said he was innocent, and she was almost prepared to believe him.
As she was wondering whether he should, at least, be given that chance she felt him taking her hand in his and she looked down.
She tried to imagine the tanned and somehow boyish hand with perfectly clean fingernails and evenly filed nails holding a gun, pulling a trigger, wielding a knife.
The tightening of his grip surprised her.
Before she could stop him he had pulled her to her feet and was dragging her out of the door.
“Quick, this way.”
She had no choice but to follow him out of the garden and into the cover of the pine trees where he slowed to a walk.
“Stop, Guy. Stop a moment. Please I need to catch my breath. Why did you do that?”
“Is anyone following us?” he asked, ignoring her question.
Jenna looked back down to the house. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. We need to get to the car. There’s only one road out of here and if they block that we won’t be able to get away.”
“I don’t think so. I must get back.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I need to explain. They haven’t ever given me a chance to explain.”
“Explain what?”
“They’ve already decided I’m guilty.”
“And you’re not?” Jenna asked, hoping that she didn’t sound too antagonistic.
Guy did not answer her; instead he changed the subject. “Where do you think all that gold came from?”
Jenna thought she should humour him; provoking him, she was beginning to realise, might be dangerous. “Was there a lot?”
Guy nodded.
“It could just be some sort of theatrical prop, you know, perhaps she sings operetta and they’ve just done Pirates of Penzance?” she suggested as calmly as she could.
“It seemed heavy enough to be real. And she was pretty defensive about it, wasn’t she?”
“But if it was real gold why would it just be there, in an unlocked basement?”
“Perhaps she thought no one would be looking for it if no one knew it was there. Having loads of security on a door might have made any passing thieves inquisitive.”
“Though perhaps they don’t get a lot of passing thieves up here,” Jenna smiled ruefully.
“Perhaps not. And if there were they’d probably take what was in plain sight rather than delve through broken garden chairs and stuff. Anyway, we need to find somewhere we can talk. Sort everything out.”
“Everything?”
Guy didn’t explain.
“Fuck!”
“Pardon?”
Guy had remembered where he had seen the man in the cellar. He and that woman had been at Warwick’s funeral.
“He was at the funeral,” he whispered to himself. Jenna barely heard him.
He couldn’t stay here, by the car, talking, wasting time. The man had to be a policeman. There was only one reason he could be here. He was trapped. He had thought that all he had to do was meet with Jenna and he would persuade her to like him, just as easily as he had persuaded Arjun, and if she didn’t he would kill her. But he hadn’t thought it all out. It had all happened too quickly. He had had months to plan the first killings but then, through no fault of his own, people had got in his way.
It seemed his options were running out.
“We’ve got to go,” he said, grabbing Jenna’s arm. “No, not the car. They’ll have blocked the road by now. We’ll have to walk down to the village.”
“Walk? It’s miles.”
“It’s not that far. Look, the road has to go a long way around, walking it’s not that far.”
Jenna looked down at her feet. “And look at my shoes. No, Guy. No.”
“You’d go back?” he asked. “You’d leave me?”
Jenna knew she would if she could.
“Look,” she said, putting slightly more distance between them. “Look, we can arrange to meet, this evening if you like. We can talk then. We don’t have to do anything now, do we?” She wanted, more than anything, to be back in the safety of the house.
“If you go back they’ll tell you all sorts of lies about me and you won’t meet me, will you? You didn’t keep our date the other day, did you?”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“You can’t leave me. I won’t let you go back. We have to be together.”
Jenna did not like the look in Guy’s eyes and the menace in his voice. She turned away from him and headed back towards the house.
“No! Jenna! No!”
He had grabbed her arm again and began dragging her away from the car.
This time she fought but his grip was too strong. She had to go with him; down towards the village she could just see below them through the trees.
Fergal and Anne climbed up the veranda steps and met the inquiring stares of Skye, Diane and Pat.
“We found the car but no sign of either of them,” Fergal explained.
“Shit,” Anne swore as she sat down.
“Did any of you see them?”
Pat, Diane and Anne shook their heads in unison.
“What now?” Diane asked.
“They’ll be on foot,” Fergal pointed out unnecessarily.
“So how long will it take them to reach the village?” Anne asked Pat.
“It’s a long time since I walked. Fifteen minutes, ish? It depends on how fit they are.”
“What the hell did she think she was doing?” Diane shook her head.
“Did he give her a choice?” Fergal asked.
“Of course she had a choice.” Pat’s judgement was harsh.
Skye looked at Fergal before putting forward her view. “Perhaps she’s fed up with being a pawn in ev
eryone else’s game. Perhaps she doesn’t give a shit about the money. Perhaps she doesn’t buy into these tales of murder and mayhem. Perhaps she just wanted to find out more about him in case we were all wrong.”
“You could be right,” Fergal said thoughtfully. “Though that doesn’t mean the decision she made was the right one.”
“It most certainly wasn’t.” Diane was adamant. “She has no idea how ruthless and dangerous he is. How many people has he disposed of already? Do you think he’s going to stop now? Of course he isn’t.”
“People do sometimes make bad choices, and Jenna may just have made the worst one of her life,” Pat said to no one in particular.
“But that doesn’t mean to say we should accept what she has done. We must do something.”
Anne had been thinking and took control. “Fergal and Pat, you go back to his car then, Pat, I’ll pick you up while Fergal stays in case they go back for it. Diane, you and Skye stay in the village while Pat and—”
“Sorry, Anne,” Diane interrupted, “that won’t work. If they did go back to the car what use would Fergal be on his own? No. We need to think more cleverly. We have to work out what he will do. Where will he take her? Will she stay with him? Will he come back for the gold?”
“I suspect he won’t be worried about the gold. He couldn’t move it quickly, could he? No. He has no way of getting it away. No,” she repeated as if convincing herself, “he won’t worry about the contents of my basement. For a while anyway.”
“When this is all sorted I’d love to know how Luis’s treasure ended up here. It is the treasure Luis buried in his father’s garden in 1936, isn’t it?” Fergal looked at Pat as he asked the question.
“That conversation is for another time,” she said firmly.
“So if he doesn’t come back for the gold where will he take her?” Skye asked, bringing everyone’s thoughts back to Jenna’s predicament.
“He has no car now…”
“Unless he steals one.”
“Risky.”
“He’s a sailor,” Diane said quietly. “He will go to the marina and find a boat. He will drown her.” She was regretting her loyalty to Barford. She should have seen that Guy was beyond help. And nothing like his gentle father.
Hostage to Fortune Page 31
