Ethan was shaken by the news. He remembered his sister-in-law Ann, a small woman with delicate features and an infectious laugh. And he thought of his brother James, a quiet man in whom he had often confided at difficult times in adolescence. Now, he had to adjust to Sarah being nothing but a friend, while pretending to the family she continued to be his niece.
They talked through the evening, gradually leaving behind the two pressing topics of the day, the murder and Sarah’s unburdening of herself.
It was almost time for bed when something crossed Sarah’s mind.
‘Ethan, I’ve thought of another place.’
‘I’m sorry… A place?’ He was tired after a late night and early morning, followed by a stressful day.
‘For the letter.’
‘Oh, the letter. Why didn’t he just post it to you? Or tell you where he’d put it?’
‘I think he was going to do that at the birthday party. He said something a few weeks ago about having something to tell me on the day. As usual, that was all he said. But it has just occurred to me that he might have put it in the library after all.’
‘Sarah, we’ve been right through the library—’
‘No, we haven’t. I don’t know what’s in his will except for one thing: he was going to leave all his biblical studies books to me. Plus his papers. He knew I would get the books after he died, that they’d go straight to me. He might have left the letter in one of them.’
After an argument about going back to the crime scene in the freezing cold, Ethan shrugged his shoulders and they went across.
It took them ten minutes to find it. Ethan stumbled on it in the a book entitled The Earliest Christian Artefacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins, slipped between pages 50 and 51. Sarah smiled.
‘I used to use this a lot when I was here. He knew I’d look at it before long. Now, let’s see what this letter says.’
It wasn’t just a letter. It was a thick handwritten memoir that began with Gerald’s account of an LRDG expedition into the south-western Libyan desert in May 1942. Sarah read it aloud. It took a long time, but as the story unfolded, exhaustion lifted from them and they grew transfixed. A temple in the desert, a shimmering of mosaics, relics of the crucifixion, the tomb of Christ. It read like something from Indiana Jones.
A sheet of headed notepaper followed those that recounted the discovery of Wardabaha, its tombs, and its relics.
My Dearest Sarah, it began, If you are reading this, I shall have gone to meet the men I have killed and receive justice for any wrongs I have done to others. More likely, I have returned to oblivion, and perhaps that will be for the best. Of all men, I have been among the closest in life to Jesus. I have stood by his tomb and handled relics of his passion in my bare hands in a cold place while silence swallowed me alive. But I do not believe. Not in him, not in any god, not even, perhaps, in myself.
No doubt you are asking yourself ‘What happened?’ To Wardabaha, to the relics we found, to the Tuaregs. The truth is, I’m not exactly sure, at least insofar as the city is concerned, and the Kel Tamasheq. Some bad things happened after we left the oasis. Word got out somehow, and there was an attempt to steal the relics and to find the city. We destroyed our records of the trip, but it was too late. One of our number had boasted about the find to the wrong person, someone who was sent to the front the following day and made a prisoner of war. No one knows what happened exactly, but the story got into the hands of the Germans. No, not the Jerries as such, a queer bunch, dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. Or rather more than that. The Hungarian, Almásy, was mixed up in it somewhere. He wanted to get his hands on the things we brought back; two of our party were killed as a result.
The war in North Africa moved west and ended less than a year later. Things seemed to go quiet after that. Chips and I hung on, then we were transferred to Palestine till the whole show ended in ’45. I’ve devoted my time since then to finding out more about it all, the tombs, the relics, everything. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is all genuine, that we really did find the place where Jesus Christ and all those others were buried.
But it’s not over. I chose you to take this thing on after me; you were the only one in the family to show a flicker of interest. Now it’s up to you. To tell the world. To organise an expedition into the desert. You’ll have to keep it low key until the university is ready to make an announcement. Chips has three of the relics, I have the other three; he knows all about you. I’ll introduce you at my birthday bash next year, get you properly acquainted. We’re both too old to take you out there, but I know the coordinates by heart: 20 4 1 N by 20 7 3. I’ve drawn a rough map on the next sheet. I can’t tell you what you’ll find there, or whether anyone will have got there before you; one thing we both know is that, if anyone did, they haven’t said a word about it to anyone.
Take care of yourself, my dear. You have pleased me very much, above all by your intelligence and determination. Whatever you may think now, you are a beautiful young woman who deserves a good man and a happy marriage. I’m only sorry that I may not live long enough to see that happen, but I’m confident it will.
Speaking of wills, I’ve seen to it that you’re quite well provided for in mine. Most of the older generation lack for little, so my money will go mainly to my grandchildren and their children. I know you will use the money well.
I know there’s something I haven’t mentioned, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. Unless… Could it be the relics? I still have them here at Woodmancote. Where are they? In the safest hiding place I could think of. By the time you read this, my funeral will have come and gone. Perhaps then it will be time for you to visit the family mausoleum. It’s a stuffy old place, and I’ve decided not to spend the rest of eternity dumped there. It would remind me too much of that other place, that place the sands have probably covered again. I’m to go up in smoke. The world I knew is long dead. You have your life ahead of you.
All my love,
Gerald
The next sheet was the map. And that was all.
Sarah put the letter down. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes were filled with tears. The full horror of Gerald’s death had finally struck her, and her wounded heart repined at the thought of its manner and its possible meaning.
Ethan put his arm round her, and she let herself be comforted, but not consoled. She leant into his body, her head pressed against his shoulder, her frame racked by cruel sobbing. He did all he could to ease her pain, but he felt clumsy and without the amplitude of feeling that might have attuned him better to the limits of her distress. He rubbed her back and spoke soothing words, all the time struggling not to let himself be stirred by her presence, by the physicality of her, the smell of her perfume, the softness of her hair, or his own need to give and receive comfort. She was an entrancing and beautiful woman, and he feared he already had feelings for her that had to be suppressed for both their sakes. Even if she wasn’t his niece, the family didn’t know that.
In time she grew still. He let her pull away from him, blinking and drying her eyes with her knuckles.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘There’s no need to be. I loved him too. He should have died in his bed with all the family round him. Not where we found him, not in that way.’
She nodded, sniffing as she did so. Then she glanced at the clock.
‘Where are we going to sleep?’ she asked. ‘Can we stay here? The lodge is still cold, and all my stuff is here.’
‘We’re not really supposed to be here,’ he said. ‘We could be contaminating important evidence.’
‘We don’t have to go near the crime scene. And you’ve been in there already.’
He hesitated, then nodded. Bob should have posted someone in the house as a matter of routine. Perhaps it would be a good idea to stay.
‘We’ll have to get up early,’ he said. ‘Before Bob and his team arrive.’
‘Ethan…’ Sarah hesitated. ‘Can I sleep with you tonight?�
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He looked at her, astonishment vivid on his face.
‘Come again?’
She reddened.
‘Oh, not…not like that, I don’t mean… Oh, hell, you mustn’t imagine I… What I meant was… I don’t want to spend the night alone, not after what happened. Our bedrooms aren’t exactly close together. What if something happened?’
‘Sarah, I don’t exactly think… I couldn’t… If you slept in my bed, well…you might be my niece and everything, but you’re an attractive woman and…’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean in your bed, not that. Why would you think that? In your room. There’s some sort of bunk bed in mine, we could just…’
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. She was talking sense. He had already brought a shotgun up from the gunroom in order to keep it next to him overnight.
‘You promise not to prance about in anything too…revealing or…’
‘Ethan, it is about a million degrees below freezing outside, a freezing fog is on its way from the West Country, and I shall be wearing my thickest thermal undies beneath layers of the gear I wear when I’m mountaineering. Or would you actually prefer it if I – what did you say? – pranced around in a tiny thong and socks?’
He had rather hoped to avoid having such an image implanted in his already overcharged brain.
‘I’m…that’s to say…I’m perfectly sure we can contrive something. But I’ll have the camp bed.’
‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.’
‘What about these relics, though – if that’s what they are? Shouldn’t we get them out of that miserable place? They may get rusty or something.’
‘Ethan, they have waited for decades. If they are rusty, they are rusty. If God has need of them, He has infinite patience, or so I’m told. I’m sure another night in the vault won’t do them any harm. We’ll fetch them in the morning. Now, all I want is to put my head on a pillow and crash out.’
They left without thinking, leaving the letter and the map behind.
When he next saw her, she was wearing a heavy-duty dressing gown raided from Senhora Salgueiro’s wardrobe. She kicked a leg to show him the flannelette pyjamas underneath.
Ethan did the rounds of the vast, almost empty house. He found the control panel for the burglar alarm, but could not locate the code number anywhere. It was too late to ring Senhora Salgueiro, but he thought it unlikely there would be any fresh break-ins over the next few hours. He headed back to his bedroom and slipped inside a sleeping bag on the narrow camp bed, mentally preparing himself for an uncomfortable night. He switched out the table lamp he’d placed on the floor next to him and wished Sarah goodnight.
‘Goodnight, Sarah. Try not to think about what’s happened. Get a good night’s sleep.’
‘I’m going to sleep for the next week,’ she answered, her voice slurred with tiredness. Moments later, light snoring filled the air.
‘Sarah? Sarah, are you still awake?’
Obviously not.
7
A Visit in the Night
Sleep came to Ethan at last, but it proved a troubled sleep, broken with dreams of the dead, nightmares in which every murder victim he had ever seen rose up from blood or water or earth to stalk him. They came to him, one followed by another, pallid remnants of human beings, some recognisable, others beyond all recognition. And they spoke to him of death and its suddenness, of the minute inflictions of pain that had brought them down, of the speed of a knife or the agony of a bullet crashing through the naked skull. Abi his wife stood among them, pointing and still, and his bleeding grandfather stood behind her, grinning and deathly pale.
He woke with a start. Images from the depths of sleep hung before his eyes, sounds from his dreams reverberated in his ears, and his brain struggled to break free. Then he heard a sound and knew it was in the room with him. Someone was moving in the darkness.
‘Sarah?’ he mumbled, thinking she must be trying to find her way through the dark to the bathroom. ‘Put the light on. Don’t you bloody fall on me.’
There was a scream, then someone switched the light on. The glare was too harsh for his sleep-filled eyes. He blinked, his head filling with jagged fragments of light that hurt his pupils like shards of fine glass. The scream echoed a second time. Sarah. He forced himself to keep his eyes open.
Two men were standing over Sarah, who lay on her back in bed. One was just switching off a torch. The other reached down and grabbed Sarah’s arm, pulling her out from the bedclothes, while she struggled to resist him. Her legs tangled with the covers, her assailant’s grip tightened, and inch by inch he dragged her out.
Ethan wriggled out of his sleeping bag. It was freezing cold, but he pulled himself free and got to his feet.
The man who had been holding the torch turned and looked at him.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘If your life means anything to you.’
When Ethan looked again, he saw that the man was holding a pistol and that it was pointing straight at him. Somewhere in his brain, he registered that the man had spoken with a foreign accent, German, perhaps, or Scandinavian.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m here to ask the questions,’ the armed man replied. ‘Do as I say and sit down.’
The other man had managed to pull Sarah free of the bedclothes, and to haul her to a standing position beside the bed. He remained silent throughout.
The man with the gun spoke.
‘I told you to sit down. If you don’t, my friend here will hurt her. Keep your hands in front of you, and forget any thoughts you may have of heroism. If you try to attack either of us, I will not hesitate to shoot you.’
The camp bed was too unstable to sit on, so Ethan crossed to the nearest chair and sat on it. He took care to commit the faces of the intruders to memory, singling out the most obvious features that would work well later in an e-fit or EigenFIT session at the station.
The man with the gun wore a black woollen cap from the edges of which strands of blond hair poked out. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, well fed, calm. His face was northern European, his eyes were deep cerulean, his lower jaw was set back half an inch from the upper, his ears stuck out slightly more than average, a long scar ran from high on his forehead almost to the point of a sharp nose. But while the region of Ethan’s brain that was a policeman took all this in, the emotional centres focused, not on the disparate parts, but on the man himself; and the man sent a narrow blade of ice all the way along Ethan’s spine. He had interviewed his share of killers in his time, and he knew at once that the man only a couple of yards away would be capable of anything, that murder would come to him as easily as blowing his nose.
The other man was, Ethan thought, quite probably eastern European or Russian. He was much bigger than the first man, well over six feet tall, and muscular. His face, like his partner’s, showed neither emotion nor any sign of stress. Thick, startled eyebrows like giant hairy caterpillars loomed above heavy, wrinkled eyelids. Beneath the latter glared somnolent, dark olive-green eyes, and lower again pale thin lips framed yellowing teeth. Beauty and the Beast, thought Ethan. If Beauty was a killer, Beast would be the torturer who prepared his victims for the coup de grâce.
Beauty snapped an order to his companion in a language that sounded Slavic to Ethan’s ears. The big man nodded, took tight hold of Sarah and twisted her round till she was facing him. Suddenly, he grabbed her clothes at the neck and started to rip them. His meaty hands tore the fabric apart like paper. He stripped her to the waist, then pushed down her trousers and pants before forcing her to step out of them.
Ethan looked away, but it was all he could do not to throw himself on one or other of the attackers.
Beauty walked across to Ethan and put the barrel of his gun under his chin, forcing him to raise his head.
‘Mr Usherwood. Ethan. You bear a great resemblance to your photograph. Miss Usherwood too. She’s a lovely young
woman, is she not? Pretty, and with such a striking body. My companion is, as you can imagine, a lonely man. Not a great success with women, unless he has them by force or whatever small sums he can afford to pay the more desperate among them. His attitude to the sexual act is, if I may put it bluntly, much like that of an ape. I don’t expect him to live long, but for the moment he is strong and devoted to me, and I find him useful.
‘Now, I should add that I find Miss Usherwood most tantalising. If you would care to open your eyes, you would see that she has the most delectable of bodies: firm young breasts, a waist and hips that would make a man of stone desire her, long, slim legs… Imagine it all for yourself. And while you do so, let me tell you what Lukacs here is going to do with your precious niece. He is going to rape her. He is going to force himself on her, and it’s very likely he will hurt her while he does so. He is not a gentle man; I’m sure you can see that. She is already shivering, so I imagine the ordeal will be worse for her than if she were warm, relaxed, and welcoming.
‘When he has done, he will withdraw and take out his gun to point at you while I rape her as well. Of course, I am hardly as well endowed as my little friend Lukacs, but I shall be eager. And when I too have done, I see plenty of objects in this room that could be well employed to rape her as many times as Lukacs and I desire.’
‘You may as well kill me,’ shouted Sarah, fighting hard to stop herself quivering from cold and fear.
‘We may do that in the end,’ said Beauty. ‘Once I have all I need from you, that’s exactly what I may do.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Ethan, praying it was something he could give. He knew he would give anything to prevent everything the man had threatened. Even had Sarah been the remotest person to him, a passing stranger from any street or street corner, he would have offered her assailants whatever they wanted just to spare her the ordeal they threatened. And it dawned on him then, in that moment of crisis, that in the short time he’d known her, Sarah had, of all people, become the least remote to him.
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