by A K Reynolds
We climbed out. To either side of us was a dense screen of trees, their leaves the golden brown of autumn. Ahead of us, the road sloped up steeply to a huge basin-shaped depression scooped out of the hillside. The walls of the basin were at least a hundred feet high, vertical, and made of limestone.
‘After you,’ Jurgen said, locking the car.
I walked up the slope. The road ended at the quarry. The floor of the quarry was level, sandy, and strewn with boulders of varying sizes. To our left the quarry joined a second. Picking my way between boulders, I made my way to the second quarry, doing my best to lose Jurgen. I knew the terrain and he didn’t, which made it easy. His voice came from some way behind me: ‘Slow down Jo, I can’t see you.’
I didn’t reply. I wanted to speak to Sarina on her own and find out if Jurgen was telling the truth. If he was, all well and good; and if he wasn’t, we’d give him the slip. But I needed a head start on him for that to work. It looked like I’d got it. The sky was blue with wisps of cloud at high altitude, the sun casting long shadows. It was especially cold in the shadows. My breath misted in the air and I shivered in spite of my warm jacket. What sufficed as cold weather protection in central Manchester didn’t quite cut it in the Lake District and I wished I was wearing warmer clothing.
Rounding a corner, I was confronted by the dramatic entrance to Cathedral Cavern itself. My heart started pumping wildly. That’s how much I was looking forward to seeing Sarina.
Just in front of the entrance was a large, perfectly still pool of water, like a black mirror on the ground. I skirted around the edge of it wondering when, or if, Sarina would show herself. Soon, I was standing just inside the low opening. Up ahead, the ceiling rose some forty feet above me. The floor of the cavern was level and built from stone. Enough light came in that I could see perhaps twenty feet into the cavern itself. Beyond that it was pitch black, with no sign of life, certainly not of my wife.
I took a few hesitant steps forwards. ‘Sarina,’ I said.
When my eyes had become accustomed to the sparse light I went further, the darkness enveloping me. By this time I’d left Jurgen behind.
‘Sarina?’
An explosion of light briefly blinded me. Then I saw Sarina right in front of me, holding a torch. She directed the beam onto her face. Her face had as much power to transfix me in that moment as it had on the very first day I’d met her. Those eyes of hers were luminous, yet darker than the cave. Her long hair, tumbling from beneath a striped beanie hat, blended into the darkness. She was wearing an outfit I recognised from one of our walking breaks together. An orange-coloured Patagonia down parka, black Berghaus walking trousers, and orange Phantom 6000 mountain boots. That little lot had set her back the thick end of £2,000. I’d thought she’d earned the money for it from her highly paid job. Now I knew better. I’d paid for it using my inheritance. She smiled at me like the devil, and I wondered if she’d lured me there to do me even further harm than she’d done already. I decided to reserve judgement on that issue. At least for a while longer.
‘How’re you doing, Jo?’ she said.
‘Not so good to be honest with you.’
‘I’m hoping I can improve things. Let’s go somewhere more amenable to talk.’
We walked side by side back the way I’d come, emerging from the cavern into the cool light of the day. There was no sign of Jurgen. I wondered if I should mention him.
As we skirted the pool by the entrance she said, ‘I’m glad my message wasn’t too obscure for you.’
‘It wasn’t. I got it right away.’
‘I had to use words only you and I could understand in my email. If I hadn’t, someone could’ve hacked your emails, read where we planned to meet, and invited themselves along. Which would have been disastrous, of course.’
‘Email?’
‘The email I sent you telling you to meet me at our place.’
‘I never got that email.’
Her dark eyes widened so they were even bigger than usual, and I saw a look in them I’d never seen in them before: fear.
‘Then how did you know to come here?’ she said.
Now it was my turn to feel fear, because I remembered the email from Sarina that’d disappeared before I’d had the chance to read it. The one I’d thought I’d imagined.
I hadn’t imagined it at all. Jurgen had hacked into my emails, read the one from Sarina, then deleted it. Then he’d used the information he’d got from it to deceive me into bringing him here.
‘Jurgen told me,’ I said.
This inspired something akin to panic in my wife.
‘Who’s Jurgen?’
‘I am,’ came a voice from behind us.
We both turned at the same time and saw Jurgen, smiling and relaxed, with my gun in his hand, aimed at me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
‘What the absolute fuck?’ Sarina said.
And then I knew she hadn’t arranged the meeting to do me further harm. She’d wanted to help. The person who wanted to harm me, if anyone did, was Jurgen.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
‘I want the thing your wife has on Devlin.’ He looked at Sarina. ‘If you don’t give it to me, I’m going to shoot your wife. And if that doesn’t persuade you to hand it over, I’m going to hurt you until you do hand it over.’
It sounded as if Jurgen was making the same mistake Jenrack had made. He thought the information I had would give him leverage on Devlin. Whatever advantage it might confer, it wasn’t that. I decided against putting him right. No point in helping your enemies.
‘Wait!’ Sarina said. ‘Not so fast. I’ll hand it over.’ She put her arms around me. Her embrace made me feel good, in spite of the circumstances we were in. ‘I don’t want you to do anything to Jo. I love her.’
I wondered what she could be planning on handing over to Jurgen, as I had the thing he wanted in my pocket. Jurgen held out his left hand, the gun being in his right.
‘Very sensible. I’m waiting.’
‘I don’t have it on me. I didn’t want to risk bringing it out. It’s back at the house I’m staying in.’
Jurgen’s eyebrows moved closer together and two neat little vertical lines appeared on his forehead. ‘Then we’d better all go back to your house,’ he said, ‘and you’d better be telling the truth, because if you’re not this situation won’t turn out at all well for either of you. Get going. And just remember, I’m right behind you.’
Sarina released me from her warm embrace and we both turned and headed back to the layby where the cars were parked, carefully picking our way between the numerous boulders in our path littering the quarry floor.
‘Which car do you want to use?’ Sarina asked.
‘The Mini,’ Jurgen said. ‘Too many people know about the Ford. I don’t think any of us would want them to find it outside your house.’
Sarina unlocked her car.
‘Jo gets in first, in the front passenger seat,’ Jurgen said. So I sat in the front. He waved the pistol at Sarina. ‘Now you, in the driver’s seat.’ She got behind the steering wheel and Jurgen sat in the back behind us.
‘Okay, drive to your house,’ Jurgen said. ‘Drive like your wife’s life depends on it, because it does.’
Sarina gave me a reassuring look, squeezed my knee, and started the car. She took us down the track back to the A593 and we drove south through magnificent countryside which was wasted on me. This was no time to admire the views. Instead, I fretted about the hole me and Sarina were in. The way I saw it, sooner rather than later Jurgen was going to find out that Sarina didn’t have the information he wanted. When he did, I’d have to tell him I had it, inside Tara’s mobile phone. Then I’d have to give him the mobile phone. And when he found out I couldn’t access the information it contained, he’d kill us both.
The landscape we were passing through, which was at the southern end of the Lake District, consisted of rolling fields, dryst
one walls, and small copses of trees. In the distance limestone crags glowered under a cold blue sky. And next to us was Coniston Water, massive and deadly, its surface still as glass.
We turned off the road and descended on a dirt track to a small cottage near the edge of the lake. It had stone walls, a slate roof, and mullioned windows. Sarina climbed out of the car, closely followed by myself and Jurgen.
‘This way,’ Sarina said, opening the front door.
Jurgen urged me forwards by pressing the muzzle of the gun into the small of my back. ‘Hurry up.’
The door opened into a narrow hallway with rooms leading off it on the right hand side, and a final room at the end. Sarina stopped, took off her beanie hat, and shook out her hair as casually as if she’d just come back from a constitutional stroll.
‘What are you doing?’ Jurgen said.
‘Just taking my outdoor things off.’
‘Don’t.’
By the time he’d said the word ‘don’t’, she was peeling off her orange parka. The figure she revealed, in a snug black jumper, had as much power to mesmerise me as ever. Even so, it wasn’t hard for me to concentrate on what I needed to do: work out a means of escape. But try as I might, I couldn’t think of a single one. Sarina stooped to remove her boots.
Jurgen got impatient and pushed in front of me. ‘I said don’t!’
‘Whatever you say,’ Sarina said.
She walked a couple more paces down the hall and opened the first door she came to, a crude affair made of timber planks bearing a latch to open it with. She went in. Jurgen stood to one side training the gun on me, waving the barrel to indicate I should go in next. I did. Apart from the television in the corner, a modest-sized plasma model, the room looked like it had been furnished and decorated in Victorian times if not earlier. It had an open fireplace with coal heaped in it ready to burn, a mirror hanging from a couple of brass chains on the chimney breast, and reproductions of paintings by Constable on the walls. In and among there were horse brasses, china ornaments of street urchins and old men and fat women, a wooden rocking chair, two conventional armchairs, and an old-fashioned dresser pushed up against the far wall.
Sarina had gone to the other side of the room. She had her back to me and was standing in front of the dresser, pulling open a drawer. Jurgen sprinted over to her. It was obvious why. He was worried she might be taking out a gun. His heavy footsteps alerted Sarina and she wheeled around to face him.
I didn’t exactly see what happened next because Jurgen was a big man, and he blocked my view of what Sarina did. What I do know is that his head sort of turned sideways as he fell to the floor. Sarina was holding a silver candlestick in her hand.
Before Jurgen hit the floor she belted him with it a second time, catching him on the arm holding the gun. The sound of the impact told me she’d broken his arm. The gun left his hand and clattered along the floor. I ran and picked it up. For lack of any better idea I trained it on Jurgen. Sarina put the candlestick on the dresser.
‘Everything in its place and a place for everything,’ she said.
The blow she’d landed on Jurgen’s head hadn’t knocked him unconscious but it’d disorientated him. The second appeared to have caused him a considerable amount of pain. He writhed around on the floor clutching his head with his uninjured arm, unaware, at least for a while, that he had a gun trained on him.
Sarina stood with her hands on her hips watching him, a smug sort of smile on her face.
After a minute or two he composed himself sufficiently to absorb the situation, then he used his good arm to push himself into a sitting position and leaned back against the dresser.
‘That wife of yours isn’t what you think she is, Jo,’ he said, his legs stuck straight out in front of him, hands in his lap.
‘How so?’
‘Hench didn’t kill your sister.’ He pointed at Sarina. ‘She did. I only said Hench did it to make life easy for myself. I didn’t want you to decide you weren’t coming with me to see her. I needed you with me to be sure she’d show up for the meeting.’
There was something about the conviction with which Jurgen made his accusation against Sarina that made me doubt her. And since I wanted vengeance for Tara’s death, I turned the gun towards Sarina. If she’d killed my sister, she’d have to die by my hand, no matter that I loved her. The smile left Sarina’s face.
She shook her head. ‘He’s lying, Jo. Hench killed Tara, like Jurgen originally told you, or someone else working for Devlin did it. I was upstairs in the bathroom when the doorbell went, then I heard Tara talking to someone at the front door. Their voices were muffled but I could tell she was talking to a couple of policemen. They were bent cops working for Devlin. She screamed and that’s when I knew something was very wrong, and I’m ashamed to say I panicked and sneaked into the shower and cowered behind the curtain. From where I was hiding I saw them walking past the bathroom door, which was open. They were wearing forensic suits. They searched the place and when they left they smashed the front door in, probably to throw honest coppers off the scent. When I was sure they’d gone I went downstairs and found Tara’s body. I knew they were looking for me so I ran, and kept on running.’
‘Why was Tara in our house? What were you two up to?’ I said.
‘She was involved, Jo. You know that.’
Sarina was right. Tara had bequeathed me evidence of her involvement – her mobile phone with a cryptic message for me.
‘Why didn’t you call me and explain what was going on while you were on the run?’
‘You’ll never know how much I wanted to do that, Jo, but I couldn’t. They would have tracked me down using my mobile phone signal and they would’ve been just as brutal with me as they were with Tara.’
I turned the gun back on Jurgen. ‘If Hench or Devlin did it, that makes you guilty.’
It wasn’t great logic coming from a barrister but by then I was way beyond legal theory. Practicalities like survival and vengeance had become all that mattered to me.
‘How did your wife die?’ Jurgen said. ‘Think about it.’
I knew at once my sister’s death didn’t square with the way Hench worked. She’d been strangled.
I pointed the gun away from Jurgen and back towards Sarina. ‘It must have been you,’ I said. ‘Those people would never kill someone the way Tara was killed.’
‘You’re making a big mistake Jo.’
I dropped into a crouch holding the gun in both hands, arms outstretched, to show I meant business. Sarina turned to face me, placing her hands on her hips. ‘Go on then, kill me.’
I tried squeezing the trigger but the strength somehow drained from my fingers rendering it too stiff to pull.
Sarina dropped her arms. ‘You can’t do it, can you?’
She walked slowly towards me, arms swinging gently by her sides, hips swaying catlike with each step she took. My hands began to shake. The closer she got, the more they shook. I concentrated on feeling hate for her because she’d killed Tara. She grew so close her flat stomach was pressed against the muzzle. Then she gripped the barrel and wrenched the gun from me like an adult confiscating illicit sweets from a small child.
I hung my head in shame. What had I been thinking? She was my wife. She wouldn’t have betrayed me.
‘You didn’t take off the safety,’ she said. ‘Nor did he. What kind of useless lump are you?’ she nodded towards Jurgen.
It made me wonder whether Jurgen really was an undercover cop who’d been in the army. It seemed more likely he was just a low level chancer who’d seen an opportunity to make money by turning over his boss, and gone for it. If that was the case, his one chance to get a big payoff had failed.
Sarina walked over to where Jurgen was still sitting on the floor, his back propped up against the dresser. Keeping the gun on him she crouched low and went through his pockets, taking the spare magazines of ammo from them. I got the impression that even if Sarina hadn’t
been holding the gun Jurgen wouldn’t have resisted. She’d belted him good and hard with the candlestick and all the fight had been knocked out of him.
Sarina stood up and put the spare magazines on the dresser. Then, holding the gun in both hands, arms outstretched, she bent at the hips until the muzzle was only inches from his forehead. He raised his good arm before his eyes as though shielding himself from bright sunlight.
‘What the hell are you do–’ I didn’t get to finish the question because the sound of a gunshot cut my sentence short.
Jurgen’s face parted company with his head, peeling away, while brain and bone and blood spattered across the dresser, before dripping to the floor behind him.
‘W– what did you do that for?’ I said.
‘I had to.’
‘We could have let him live. Maybe tied him up or something.’
She shook her head.
‘He’s too dangerous, Jo. He would’ve come after us again and again until he succeeded.’
‘So what now?’
‘Now we go before Devlin or anyone else catches up with us. And we plan our next move.’
She flipped on the safety and stuffed the gun behind her back in the waistband of her trousers like she was born to behave that way, and I wondered whether I knew anything at all about the woman I’d somehow ended up married to. Picking up the spare magazines from the dresser, she said, ‘Let’s go.’
Like a hapless sheep I followed her. What else was I going to do? Wait for Devlin’s men to find me?
She grabbed her expensive parka and beanie hat from a hook in the hall and we went outside and got in the Mini. Sarina took the gun from the waistband of her trousers and put it in the side pocket of the car door, along with the magazines of ammunition. She gave me a quick smile and started the car.
