Dangerous Deception

by Anthea Fraser

  “You’re like an advertisement for instant sunshine.”

  “I wish I felt like it.” I had not meant to sound bitter.

  “Didn’t you sleep well?”

  “Not very.”

  “Up to tackling the task in hand?”

  “I’ve no option, have I?”

  “The sun will probably break through later. I’ve ordered packed lunches, by the way, since we didn’t get a chance to last night.”

  Morgan, overhearing this as he passed our table, stopped and cocked an eyebrow. “A shade optimistic, aren’t you? It’s quite likely to bucket down again.”

  “Then we’ll eat in the car. I think Clare should get away for the day; hotels aren’t the most cheerful places on Sundays, and this week it’ll be even worse.” His eyes flicked to the empty table.

  “No doubt you’re right. Well, I hope it keeps fine for you.”

  He moved on. Round the dining-room the tables began to fill up, and as I observed the strained eyes and pale faces of our fellow guests, I began to be glad we’d be away all day, even if I was less than comfortable in Philip’s company.

  His voice cut into my musings. “As you probably noticed, I had rather more to drink last night than I should have done.”

  I looked up. If that was meant as an apology, it was one I could have done without.

  I forced myself to speak lightly. “No problem. You have got the booklet, haven’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “I panicked when I remembered it. In fact, I ran back to look for it, but—”

  I broke off as Harry approached with the coffee, and for the rest of the meal no further reference was made to the subject uppermost in both our minds.

  Our packed lunches were awaiting us on the reception desk.

  “I’ll get my mac,” I said.

  I met Mair on the landing and handed her Philip’s sweater to dry off. She said in a low voice, “I’m sorry, miss, about last night.”

  “It’s nothing to do with me, Mair.”

  “No, miss, but I was that ashamed. You won’t say anything, will you? To Mrs Mortimer, I mean?”

  “Of course not, but for her sake rather than yours.”

  Mair hung her head. “It was proper wicked. It won’t happen again, miss.”

  I left her with her guilty conscience and went downstairs, the mac over my arm. Philip had gone outside and was waiting for me by the car.

  “I wonder if Clive is Sinbad?” I mused as we drove out of the hotel gateway. “He could have persuaded Mair to lend him my key so he could leave the note.”

  “But what possible reason could he have given? Far too risky. Anyway, he can’t be Sinbad – he’s too busy being Bluebeard!”

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  “Frankly,” Philip added, “I don’t understand your obsession with Sinbad. What does it matter who he is? We’ll find out soon enough.”

  I subsided quickly. True, to Philip it wouldn’t matter, and it shouldn’t to Goldilocks, either.

  The morning was crystal clear, the grey-blue sky an inverted bowl from which all the cloud and rain had been spilled. But the metaphorical storms were only just gathering; today, the real Goldilocks would come, and with her, the danger of detection.

  “Andrew was pumping Miss Norton about fairy tales last night,” I said. “I wondered if it was for my benefit. Then, as I started to tell you, when I went back to look for the brochure, I found him in the TV lounge.”

  “There you go again! If he is Sinbad, he knows as much as we do, if not more, so he wouldn’t need to snoop around. You’re making things needlessly complicated; the poor man probably went in to watch TV!”

  “But he’d just gone up to bed,” I said a little sulkily. “You don’t think there could be a rival gang of some kind?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  We had turned off the main valley road and now the landscape was falling away on either side to reveal wider vistas. I settled back to enjoy the drive. The road threaded its way past deserted pit-heads, black and ugly against the skyline like the humps of old Welsh dragons, and on through twisting narrow streets between stone cottages that had belonged to the miners. A group of children stood in a doorway licking iced lollies, the faded cotton of their dresses splashes of colour against the drab stone.

  Then up and out on to the open road again, narrowly avoiding a suicidal sheep. Now we began to climb and Philip changed gear, hugging the left-hand verge. On our side of the road, thickly wooded slopes rose steeply, but on the right a sheer drop fell away to the valley below. Above the noise of the car, I could hear the rush of running water, and guessed that a waterfall must be hurling itself over the edge into a river hundreds of feet beneath us.

  Gradually, as we descended again, the drop on the right became less lethal, and we entered a wide, smiling valley dotted with picture-book farmhouses. Hens clucked contentedly by the roadside and dogs lay in the sun which now, as Philip had forecast, was beginning to break through. And all around us, like a protective embrace, fold after fold of hills overlapped each other, stretching away into the blue distance.

  I stirred and felt him glance at me. It was at least twenty minutes since either of us had spoken.

  “Spectacular, isn’t it?”

  I nodded and stretched, swivelling in my seat to follow the flight of a jay which rose suddenly from a hedge. But my attention was diverted from its progress by the sight of a small red car on the road behind us. I remembered seeing a similar one some time before, and felt a prickle of unease.

  I said – and my voice was unnaturally loud – “We’re not being followed, are we?”

  His eyes went to the mirror. “I don’t think so. I noticed him a while back, but this is a public road, after all, and there haven’t been many places he could have turned off.”

  I was only partly reassured. The road plunged down into a small wood, a long green tunnel where the branches met overhead. I sat quietly, watching the bars of sunlight flick across the road. The first leaves were starting to turn gold, seeming sun-kissed even in the shadows. We climbed up out of the wood and the road straightened.

  Philip said, “We should be able to see the castle soon. Yes, look – over there.”

  I followed the direction of his finger. Away in the distance, Cefn Fawr dominated the surrounding countryside from its great height. Its grey stone prismed the sunshine into a thousand refractions, so that it glittered like a fairy palace, its twin towers outlined dramatically against the now deep blue of the sky behind it.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said in a hushed tone.

  “And dangerous, to those who try to storm it.”

  It was a timely reminder. I wished vehemently that we needn’t approach any nearer the fairy castle. I wanted to remember it as it looked at this moment, ethereal, a fragment of the past dreaming in the sunshine, with the wide, safe spaces of the valley separating it from us.

  “Do we have to go?” I asked in a small voice.

  “Cold feet, Clare? At this stage?”

  “But suppose someone sees us – on Tuesday, I mean? Is it really worth all the risks involved?”

  “That’s a question you should have asked Bryn before you set out. Personally, I’d have thought a couple of million is worth a few risks, even if we get only a fraction of it.”

  A wave of shock sluiced over me, and I only just bit back an exclamation as I realised for the first time the enormity of what I’d stumbled into. I licked dry lips.

  “Is that the price they put on it?”

  “It’s what the company had to fork out.”

  The company? Matthew’s company? I couldn’t ask.

  I said weakly, “Yes – yes, I was forgetting.”

  We were both silent, and the only sound was the hum of the wheels on the hard surface of the road. I felt a little sick; if indeed Matthew’s firm was involved, it must be a very personal vendetta Philip was engaged in. But it would be better not to pursue that line of thought.
>
  To distract myself, I glanced in the wing mirror. The red car was still behind us, but as Philip said, there’d been no turning it could have taken.

  Ahead of us, Cefn Fawr was now much nearer. On top of its promontory it seemed to grow out of the rock itself, and must command a view of many miles, to sea as well as over the land. On the side we were approaching the rock rose murderously sheer, with, as far as I could see, no cracks or crevices to give foothold. And Philip and I had to storm it and steal a treasure from its vaults. I shivered apprehensively.

  “Bryn never said it would be easy,” Philip remarked drily, “but he had the tougher job, hiding them there in the first place.”

  He drew in to the side of the road and took out a large-scale map. “While I think of it, I want to check the best route to Swansea.”

  “Swansea?” I echoed blankly.

  He glanced at me in surprise. “To the boat.”

  “Oh,” I said lamely. “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ve got a packing case in the boot, and once clear of the castle we’ll load the rolls into it and batten it down. It’s identical to all the others that’ll be in the hold.

  “Right, this is the road we’re on, and we’re now about – here.” His finger was tracing the map and I leant over to follow it. “After another mile or so we turn off on to this road, which, as you can see, is a dead end leading only to the castle. Presumably there’s some kind of parking area at the foot of the hill, but it won’t be much good to us at dead of night; we need to get in much closer.”

  “But there aren’t any other roads down there.”

  “Precisely, so we’ll have to bump the car up a sheep-track or something. That’s the point of this trip; we must know exactly where we’re making for when the time comes.

  “Our chief worry is not to have to carry the rolls too far. It’s not that they’re particularly heavy, but they are cumbersome, and even though there are nine of them, we daren’t risk going back a second time. Which, of course, is why Bryn decreed you should accompany me.” He turned to look at me. “Though I wish to hell he hadn’t. Look, Clare, whatever you’ve done up to now, this is no job for you. It could be big trouble. For Matthew’s sake, will you leave it to me? I can manage somehow, and Bryn need never know.”

  I said steadily, “It would be more dangerous for you alone, wouldn’t it?”

  “The hell with that.”

  I shook my head. “No, Philip, I’ll go with you. It’s what I’m here for.”

  I thought he was going to argue, but if so, he changed his mind and returned to the map with an offhand, “On your own head, then.

  “Now, once we’ve retrieved them and returned to the car, we rejoin this road we’re on now and follow it for ten miles or so. We turn off here, on to this B road, and from there we can drop down, thank God, to join the M4 for the last few miles. It’ll take a good hour; did you check on the tides?”

  “No, not yet. It all sounds rather terrifying.”

  “Not really; we shouldn’t run into any trouble. No one will be guarding the rolls, because no one knows they’re there. It’s most unlikely there’ll be any hitch, but if there is, the alternative plan will slide smoothly into operation. Bryn leaves nothing to chance, as you should know.”

  “How do we explain being out so late when we get back to the hotel?”

  “Why do you think there’s all this build-up about our relationship?”

  “I’d have thought it would be possible, and a lot more comfortable, to conduct it at the hotel, without staying out half the night.”

  “An interesting point,” Philip said drily. I felt my cheeks grow hot.

  “And what happens when we get to the docks?” I asked hurriedly.

  “We hand over the packing case to Rumpelstiltskin – why did Bryn choose these ridiculous names? – after which we make a quick exit. Then it’s just a straightforward journey back along the M4, off at the Dryffyd junction, and so to the hotel.”

  “By which time the door will be locked and everyone convinced we’ve also fallen off some convenient cliff.”

  “Perhaps. But we knock them up with profuse apologies about flat tyres and running out of petrol, which we don’t really expect anyone to believe.”

  “Charming,” I said sarcastically.

  “So now” – he closed the map and pushed it back under the dashboard “—we spy out the land a bit more closely. What happened to the red car, by the way? Did you notice?”

  “It passed us when we stopped. There was nothing else it could do.”

  In fact, while we’d been poring over the map there’d been a noticeable increase in traffic, and as we reached the junction with its sign to the castle, several other cars coming from the other direction also turned off. I relaxed a little. It was a sunny Sunday in the middle of the tourist season, and no doubt the red Austin was as innocent as all the rest of them.

  We parked in the designated area and while Philip locked the car, I turned to look up at the castle. And it was at that moment that a cloud slid across the face of the sun. The effect was instant and dramatic; with the removal of its light the fortress loomed over us, suddenly sinister, a brooding pile some nine hundred years old. My foreboding returned in full measure.

  Philip, however, had turned from the castle to the hill on our right, a more gentle gradient covered for the most part in grass.

  “I think it would be an idea to go up there first,” he said. “We could study the layout better at a slight distance and might spot some alternative approach.”

  I nodded, only too thankful to postpone visiting the castle, and we crossed the road and started up the bank. Here the ground rose gradually, the grey-green, brittle grass an obvious haunt of sheep. Philip took my arm to help me over the rough part, and the naturalness of the gesture made my heart ache.

  I didn’t want to think, yet, of the way my feelings were developing towards him. I knew only that my old half-impatient, half-affectionate attitude had been swept away by something altogether stronger and, in the circumstances, more dangerous. It seemed impossible that he could be so different now from what he’d always been, when I’d thought I knew him so well.

  We stopped on a little bluff to get our breath.

  “A penny for them, Clare?”

  “I was thinking,” I said reluctantly, “that you’ve changed.”

  “Not really.”

  “You were always a hard-bitten criminal?” I kept my voice light, afraid to let the conversation become personal, but he steered it skilfully back.

  “I was always considerably tougher than you realised, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you seem – older,” I said.

  “So do you, Clare. More mature, somehow. No doubt I have Bryn to thank for that.” His voice hardened. “He hasn’t hurt you in any way?”

  I shook my head wordlessly.

  “And you really love him?”

  “Please, Philip!” I turned my face away.

  “What’s the harm in telling me? I always knew you didn’t give a damn for me.”

  I was too shaken to attempt a denial. “You did?”

  “It was obvious. No strings, no pressure of any kind. That’s not the way a girl behaves when she’s in love. Everything had to be light and superficial, so I tried to keep it that way, though it was one hell of a strain at times. But there you are, I was a fool. If you’d asked me to stand on my head, I’d have done it.”

  We were standing side by side staring out to sea, an opaque expanse under the cloudy sky, and I was grateful I didn’t have to look at him. I felt confused, uncertain, being forced to look at myself through his eyes, and not liking what I saw, wanting to stop this painful dissection, but incapable of doing so.

  “Matthew tried to warn me,” Philip went on. “He told me I gave in to you too much, that you’d get tired of always having your own way, but I couldn’t see it. I was afraid that if I stopped being easy and compliant, I should lose you.”

  I s
wallowed, made myself speak. “If you knew I didn’t love you, why ask me to marry you?”

  He shrugged, his hands deep in his trouser pockets. “You weren’t interested in anyone else. I reckoned that if you were prepared to marry me, I’d more than enough love for both of us.

  “But of course, Matthew was right – I should have realised he knew you better than I ever would. You got bored very quickly, didn’t you, though for a time you were too polite to show it. It was only after your parents’ deaths that things went badly wrong. Time and again, when I longed to comfort you, it was only Matthew you wanted, and it soon became clear that I was getting on your nerves.

  “So” – he lifted his shoulders – “you threw caution to the winds and moved to the flat. I knew then it was over, though I still wouldn’t admit it. Not until – everything blew. And that was the perfect excuse, wasn’t it – might have been tailor-made. You were able to let me swing with a clear conscience.”

  I said shakily, “Please, Philip—”

  “And of course, by that time there was Bryn. I can see the attraction he must have had for you – dark, intense, the very antithesis of me. As you were at pains to point out yesterday.”

  He turned suddenly, surprising the tears on my face. “Don’t cry, Clare. It’s past history, and I’ve learned my lesson. I shall never let myself be that vulnerable again.”

  Past history for him, but only just starting for me. How shallow and selfish I’d been, using him for my own ends and discarding him with relief when he needed me most.

  I said, and the effort of speaking at all tore at my throat, “How you must hate me.”

  “No,” he contradicted quietly, “I’ve never hated you, though I came pretty near it yesterday, when I saw you waiting in the bar. Come on now, dry your eyes. There’s nothing to be gained from a post-mortem at this stage – I don’t know why I embarked on it. The past is well and truly over. For the record, are you going to marry Bryn?”

  “No!” I said violently.

  “Perhaps you’re right; he’s not the marrying kind. Well, after all that, are you ready to go on?”