She gazed at him. ‘So there was no other reason, then?’
He drove in silence for a minute. Had Nina worked him out? Had he given some clue? He struggled with the dilemma; the urge to be honest was as great as his desire for reticence. And Nina had been straight with him, so maybe he should reciprocate.
‘OK, there was something else. I was running away. Doing a geographical, as drug addicts say.’
They skidded through a junction; a melting snowman stared at them, sadly, from a farmhouse garden.
‘Running away from what?’
‘Death. My girlfriend-’ The words were cold in his mouth, cold and tasteless. ‘I was in love with a girl, Alicia Hagen, and — and — we were about to move in together…’ He swerved, taking a sharp and icy left. ‘And she was… she was run over, crushed, on a bicycle. She was just twenty-four, riding at night.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘It was worse than horrible. The police said she had been drinking, like it was her fault a fucking truck driver didn’t see her. And… we’d had a row that night, she went off, she was… she was a little neurotic but I loved her, the only girl I’ve loved and then suddenly she was dead and… and I just couldn’t stay there, not in Sydney, not in Oz. So I ran away from my guilt. From the sadness. Coward that I am. I think the last thing I ever said to her was angry. Angry words.’
Nina was staring ahead, and saying nothing. Adam switched the radio on. Then he switched it off.
‘That’s not cowardice,’ she said. ‘That’s just human.’
‘Maybe. Can we talk about something else?’
They talked about her lack of ambition; about the time he almost got scurvy working on a sheep ranch; about her sister’s rich boyfriend. The conversation brought them the whole way, to the snowy, undulant hills of the North York Moors.
Wrapping themselves in jackets and scarves, they scrunched through the frost-hardened, overnight snow. The wooded path led to a bleak hillside, where rooks cawed in black alarm at their approach. Adam got the book out, and they looked around: at the snow and the grey-black dead leaves, and the crows, and the nothingness.
And then they headed back for the car. There was indeed nothing to see in Westerdale. Adam checked the book. Archibald McLintock was quite right. ‘Scant traces remain…’
So why did he come here?
Adam drove them across Yorkshire. A revived sense of futility gripped him as they made their way cross country, over motorways, under bridges, through the winter landscapes of city and moorland. He resisted the darker thoughts, and watched the whitened bleak landscape, the crowbound trees.
Penhill Preceptory is located at the high point of a ridge in the Yorkshire Dales.
‘This is it.’
The map in the book showed them where to go. Uphill a hundred yards.
‘Here.’
‘Is that all there is?’
There was almost as much nothing in Penhill Preceptory as in Westerdale. It was just a low ruin of stones, on a freezing cold slope, deep in high and bony Yorkshire countryside. Nina stood shivering in the cold by the scattered remnants as Adam read from her father’s book, his hands numbed by the wind.
‘“The main objects of interest are the curious graves.”’
Nina pointed. ‘He means those?’
They walked halfway along the largest ruin of wall, and looked down. The curious graves turned out to be odd slots of hollowed-out stone: like small stone coffins embedded in the frozen soil. The coffins were shaped like silhouettes of human corpses, with a narrowing at the neck and a larger space for the head. The effect was sinister.
Again Adam consulted the book. ‘“These bizarre coffins are almost unique in the British Isles; the only other place where something comparable can be found is in Heysham churchyard, Lancashire, which likewise boasts rock-cut graves, dating to the Dark Ages.”’ Adam paused, and thought, and then read on. ‘“Other than this, Penhill Preceptory is largely ruinous and lacking in great interest, though its spectacular position makes it a delightful place for an historical picnic.”’
‘Picnic?’ Nina shook her head. ‘This is just a few wee graves! Just a bunch of nothing. Let’s go. Give me the keys.’
He handed her the keys and she marched off, stalking down the hill to the car. Adam followed, sensing her frustration, trying to think of some encouraging words. But he couldn’t. Maybe this entire escapade was a silly idea. He felt sorry for her; yet he was mute.
They climbed a farm gate, and stepped onto the road. Nina pressed her car keys to unlock the doors. And then a voice pierced the cold.
‘Nina McLintock?’
She swivelled. A middle-aged man in a flat cap was staring at them.
‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’
‘Do forgive me. William Surtees.’ He extended a hand, Nina took it, warily. Adam watched, observant. Always get the details.
The man was well spoken, tweedy, a rich farmer maybe.
‘Sorry, but I knew your father. I recognized the old VW as I was driving by. His car? And you, of course, he used to show me your picture. Such a terrible shame.’
‘Dad knew you?’
‘Absolutely, yes. I’m so terribly sorry. The way…’ The man looked at Nina, then at Adam. ‘It’s no ending for a man. Suicide. But he was so ill, perhaps…’
Nina raised a hand.
‘My dad was ill?’
The man, William Surtees, gazed at her, perplexed. ‘Yes of course, ah, yes, your father was dying.’
19
TUMP Lab, Zana, north Peru
The stranger’s coarse, shouting voice was baffled by the fireproof glass in the panel. But his malign intentions were apparent.
The gun was now circling Dan’s temple. Teasing. Sensual. Malevolent. Waiting. Hungry. The words came quick and angry. Building to a climax.
What could she do? She couldn’t do nothing; she couldn’t do anything. She was of course unarmed. She couldn’t simply run in.
Dan was talking now. She strained to hear the muffled words, his fearful responses, but it was said in Spanish, and his voice was quiet, and meek — apologetic. And inaudible. Then the gunman came back, urgent and harsh.
Again Dan demurred, cowering, shaking his head. More fierce queries from the aggressor. The gun was pressed to Dan’s throat once again. And now the intruder was smiling, eerily; maybe getting off on Dan’s terror. Or smiling with satisfaction at a job nearly done.
She cringed, hidden behind the door. Waiting for the bang.
But there was no bang.
Jess crept up a few inches closer, and stared, again. The gunman was still there. Taunting. Teasing. Dan was now almost on his knees. Begging for his life.
She could make a phone call, but to whom? Seeking anxiously for her phone, she tried to remember the numbers she’d been told to keep, by Dan when she had first arrived: North Peru is a pretty lawless place, take down these numbers. Police. Hospital. Me. The US embassy…
What had she done with those numbers? Keyed them into her phone? No. She’d never got around to it. They were in her bag, in a notebook, and her notebook was in the lab.
In the lab with the man with the gun, who was about to kill Dan.
