“Nah, that’s well boring, that is. Tell you what—if I say ‘Mordred,’ that means stop, and if I say ‘Merlin,’ that means carry on. And, uh, ‘Arthur’ means hold up a minute and wait for the second coming.” Jesus, where was his brain getting all this shit?
Jory laughed, though, and Mal found himself smiling right back. They just stood there for a moment, and there was definitely something going on . . .
Then some old bloke with a dog strolled past and called out, “Evening,” and Jory blinked and said, “Okay, it’s this way,” and they were off over the field, the moment lost.
Which was good, yeah. Because . . . reasons.
Right.
“So how many people know about this cave of yours?” Mal asked, matching Jory’s long strides across scrubby grass.
Jory shrugged. “None that I know of. It’s on Roscarrock land, and Bea and Bran don’t like to walk up on the cliffs.”
Shit. Mal had almost forgotten what Jory had told him about his dad, and how much of an arsehole did that make him? “You don’t mind?”
“No. I like it out here.” Jory turned to Mal. “We weren’t close, and if it was the only way he was going to find peace . . .”
Mal swallowed and nodded. He wondered if that poor sod on the tracks had found peace. Couldn’t quite see it, not with . . . Shit. Not going to think about that.
“I only found it by chance,” Jory went on briskly, which Mal was grateful for. “The original entrance has been lost for a century or longer. Probably caved in, if not deliberately blocked by the authorities. The Roscarrock boundaries aren’t as wide as they used to be.”
“‘The authorities’? That mean the excise men, like in all the stories about smugglers?”
Jory huffed a laugh. “More likely the local council, concerned about possible casualties.”
“Yeah? Thought nobody sued in them days.”
“Apparently they cared about people getting injured even if it didn’t directly cost them.” Jory walked past a footpath sign pointing off at a tangent, and opened a gate marked PRIVATE—NO TRESPASSERS.
One of those Roscarrock boundaries, Mal guessed. He followed Jory through and closed the gate behind him. “You’d never believe that of the tossers they have in power these days. I don’t mean just here. Anywhere you go, politicians are a bunch of smarmy, lying bastards. Don’t matter if they’re Westminster or local government.”
Jory’s smile was wry. “Bran was a local councillor, until he decided it was taking too much of his time away from the property business.”
Mal gave him a sharp look. “Or he’d made enough contacts already to make sure all his planning applications would go through no questions asked? Shit. Sorry. I know he’s your bruv.”
“It’s okay. You haven’t exactly seen him at his best.”
Technically he hadn’t seen him at all, but he also hadn’t seen any evidence the bastard actually had a “best,” either. Mal bit his tongue on that one. “So how do you know it’s a smugglers’ tunnel?” he asked instead. “Could it be, like, an old mine, or something?”
“There’s no tin in these lands. Or anything else worth having.” Jory made a sound that could have been a grim laugh. “You can bet Bran would have exploited it if there was. It’s possible the excavations were started in a search for minerals, but nobody knows for sure. Anyway, there’s only one use around here for a tunnel that goes down to a secluded cove.”
“Shagging?”
Okay, the next noise was definitely a laugh. Maybe a bit of a splutter. “Smuggling. As if you didn’t know. Here we are.”
Mal stared. “It’s a hole. In the ground.” It was like some giant had pressed the fingers of both hands into the earth and then pulled them apart, leaving a narrow gap about ten feet long and maybe two feet wide. Or if you saw it another way . . . well, with the grass and weeds growing all around it, it looked like a bloody great green minge. There was even a roundish bit of rock at one end to complete the picture. Not that Mal had anything against minge, but . . . “We’re going in there?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this since I was a boy.”
“Early starter, were you?” Seeing Jory’s baffled face, Mal went on quick. “Right. Uh, don’t we need ropes and stuff?”
“This way into the tunnel was created by a cave-in, so it’s pretty steep for the first few yards, but you can easily manage.” Jory sounded a lot more confident than Mal felt as they stepped up to the edge.
“Bloody hell, it’s like the entrance to the underworld. You sure we ain’t gonna meet a welcoming committee of orcs, morlocks, and a bloody great dog with three heads?”
“Not unless they’ve moved in here since last summer. And I strongly suspect I’d have noticed if so.”
“That the last time you were down here?”
Jory nodded. “I was thinking of bringing Gawen, but he’d been having nightmares at the time, and Kirsty thought it might make things worse.”
“Did you see a lot of him, back when you weren’t living here?”
“As much as I could. Which wasn’t really enough.”
“That why you moved back?”
“Yes. He’s . . .” Jory sighed and crouched down at the edge of the hole, staring into it. Mal tried not to fixate on those muscular thighs, lovingly outlined by the skintight leggings. “He’s getting bullied at school. It’s always been a problem, but last year it suddenly started getting much worse. Puberty, I suppose. Sometimes I wonder if he would have done better with a private education, but Kirsty wanted him to go to school locally, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to push the issue. That was the one good thing about my school, though. Being bright didn’t automatically make you a target.” Jory glanced back at Mal. “Did you have that problem? I mean, you’re obviously bright and well-read.”
Mal blinked. Then he forced a grin. “Nah, mate. Me, well-read? Bollocks. I just remember odd
