The Last Enemy(38)

‘Do you know when it was abandoned and why exactly?’ asked Jake.

‘There’s something about it in one of the visitor guidebooks to de Courcey Hall,’ said Dan. He got up and went to a bookshelf. ‘Mum was given one by the old earl.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Gemma said it was the only thing Mum ever got from the de Courcey family.’

He opened a slim glossy paperback guide, and flicked through the opening pages, before stopping.

‘Here it is,’ he said. Aloud, he read: ‘The original family home of the de Courceys, Platt Castle, was abandoned during the time of Elizabeth I. It is thought that this was to show their good faith to King Henry VIII, so that he wouldn’t accuse them of treason and take their family fortune, which was common practice with Catholic families at the time.’

‘So at the time the abbey at Glastonbury was ransacked when Henry VIII was on the throne and the books from the Order of Malichea given to the de Courcey family, the castle and chapel were still intact and functioning. They didn’t abandon them until years after,’ said Lauren.

‘Which means it’s possible that The Index and the Journal could have been hidden in a secret place inside the chapel at Platt Castle,’ added Jake.

Dan shrugged.

‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘But how do we find out?’

‘We go there,’ said Jake. ‘You said it wasn’t far away.’

‘Isn’t it a bit late to go exploring?’ asked Lauren. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’

‘It won’t be dark for another hour,’ Jake said. ‘At least we can go and look at the place.’

‘Will it help Gemma stay safe?’ asked Dan.

‘Possibly,’ said Jake.

‘OK,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll go and get my bike.’

‘A bike?’ asked Lauren. ‘How do we get there?’

‘It’s a motorbike,’ clarified Dan. ‘And it’s got a sidecar. We use it for getting the shopping. Cheaper than running a car.’

As Dan left the trailer to go and get his motorbike, Jake turned to Lauren and said, ‘You heard what Dan said about Gemma seeing Sue Clark?’

Lauren nodded.

‘It was about half past four when we found Jasper Brigstocke’s dead body in his shop,’ she said, shuddering at the memory of it. ‘If Gemma didn’t tell Sue Clark about Jasper Brigstocke until just before six, then it couldn’t have been Pierce Randall who tortured and killed him.’

‘Unless they’d already found out about the sale of the books some other way.’

‘Possibly, though I’m starting to think that someone else killed him,’ said Lauren.

‘The Mexicans?’ suggested Jake. ‘They had knives.’

‘Who knows,’ said Lauren. ‘We’ve seen before with these books, there’s nearly always someone else in the picture that we don’t know about.’ She looked nervous as she added, ‘I think there’s someone else at work here, someone really nasty, and we don’t know who they are.’

‘Think they’re watching us?’ asked Jake.

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Lauren. ‘I hope not. Because, if they are, we’re in more danger than we think we are.’





Chapter 19




Dan pulled up the bike in front of a wooden gate set in a high wire fence. The gate marked a gap in a thickly wooded area, but the track from the gate curved and twisted among the trees, so it was impossible to get a real view of what lay behind the fence.

The gate was closed and looked ramshackle, like it hadn’t been opened for many years. Beside it was a battered sign that said: ‘Platt Castle. Private property. No entry.’

‘This is it,’ said Dan. ‘We walk from here.’

As they took off their crash helmets and put them in the sidecar, Dan said, worried, ‘I still haven’t heard from Gemma.’

‘I’m sure she’s OK,’ said Lauren. ‘She seems a very resourceful girl.’

‘She is,’ agreed Dan, but he didn’t seem reassured. ‘Anyway, I texted her to tell her we were coming here, just in case she gets home and wonders where I am.’

Jake and Lauren followed Dan as he climbed over the gate. They made their way along the rough winding track, through a jungle of trees, until they turned a final bend and saw a clearing ahead, and at the far side of the clearing, the outline of the castle.

Castle was too grand a name for it; the building was more the size of an old manor house. Although, when the place had been built, many hundreds of years ago, it would have been an imposing building. It had thick stone walls; but the tops, where battlements would once have been, were long gone.