The Last Enemy(41)

Another realisation hit Jake, making him feel very sick. The fact he’s told us the names of his crew, and let us see their faces, means we’re not going to get out of here alive.

‘The book, Jake,’ said Guy, holding out his hand.

Jake held out the Journal, and Guy walked over and took it. He smiled.

‘A pity it’s not The Index, but it shows you’re on the right track, which is good.’ He chuckled. ‘Just think, all this time it was right here, and I never realised. Do you think The Index is buried out there as well, Jake?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Jake.

‘Well, we’ll find out tomorrow,’ said Guy. ‘It’s too dark to start looking now. So, for the moment, we’re going to have to put you into storage for the night.’

‘Storage?’ queried Jake.

Guy gestured at the floor.

‘The dungeons. The one part of this that’s still intact. What do you think of the place, by the way? It’s really quite cosy. The old man had it patched up a few years ago. I think he was thinking of opening it as a visitor attraction, to try and bring in some money.’ He looked around at the stone walls, eerie in the flickering light from the oil lamps. ‘Of course the builders were a bunch of cowboys. But then, my old man was never much of a judge of character. He always seemed to employ useless people.’ He gave Dan a nasty smile. ‘Like your mother. She got kicked out in the end, though.’

Jake saw Dan tense, and his fists clench at this insult, but he kept mute.

He knows how dangerous Guy is, Jake realised. He knows that Guy is goading him, hoping to provoke an outburst, to give him an excuse to have his crew attack Dan.

Guy said, ‘I used to spend time here when I was a kid. It was my hidey-hole. My secret camp. I brought Dan here a couple of times. Do you remember that, Dan?’

Dan didn’t reply. Bad memories, realised Jake. Very bad memories.

When Dan didn’t say anything, Guy obviously lost interest in the game he was playing with him. He turned to his crew and said, ‘OK, Des and Duke, take them down to the dungeons.’

As the two boys moved towards them, Guy added, ‘I wouldn’t try anything. They will hurt you very badly if you do.’

Des went first, then Jake, Lauren and Dan, with Duke and his machete bringing up the rear. As they walked down some uneven stone steps, the light from Duke’s torch lit up the blackness of the ancient dungeons below. The sweet decaying smell of damp earth hit Jake’s nostrils. In the torchlight he saw a door made of iron bars. It looked to be hundreds of years old, but the padlock and chain on it were new. Des unlocked it, and opened the door. Jake, Lauren and Dan walked in hesitantly. Des pulled the iron-barred door closed, and snapped the padlock on it shut.

‘Call out and Duke here will come down and cut you,’ threatened Des.

Then the two headed back up the stairs, the vanishing light of their torch plunging the dungeon into darkness.

Jake’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom. Moonlight came in from a tiny hole high up in the wall, over which wire mesh had been fixed, giving him enough light to be able to make out more of the cell.

There was a rustling sound from the deep shadows in the far corner of the room. What was it? Rats? No, it was something much larger, a shape moving in the darkness.

‘Hello!’ called out Jake nervously.

The rustling stopped, and a voice said, ‘Jake? Lauren? Is that you?’

Even though the voice was weak and thin, Jake recognised it.

‘Gareth!’

He hurried over to the figure lying on the ground, and recoiled at the sight. Gareth’s face was a mess. Even in this gloom, Jake could see dried blood was streaked across it.

‘My God, Gareth!’ he burst out. ‘What have they done to you?’

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ said Gareth. ‘They just roughed me up a bit. Nothing broken. No serious damage.’

‘I phoned your home,’ said Lauren. ‘Your wife didn’t know where you were.’

‘No one does, or I’d have been out of here by now,’ said Gareth bitterly.

‘How is that possible?’ asked Jake, astonished. ‘MI5 are supposed to know everything! How come they haven’t traced you?’

‘Because our info mainly covers terrorists, known criminal organisations and the like. What you might term “the usual suspects”. MI5 would have been concentrating their efforts to find me on all of them. Unfortunately, a rogue individual like Guy de Courcey is generally well under the radar.

‘So what happened?’ asked Jake. ‘How did you get here?’

‘Guy de Courcey contacted me and told me he had some of the Malichea books for sale,’ said Gareth. ‘He said he’d been told by Pierce Randall they were worth a lot of money, so he was offering them to the highest bidder. He wanted to meet me to see what I’d bid. He said because of his “precarious position” with Pierce Randall, he couldn’t afford to meet with me openly, so he asked me to meet him at a secret rendezvous, and to come alone.’ He gave a harsh and bitter laugh. ‘For possibly the first time in my life, I believed it would be that simple. Or, at least, I felt sure that I was capable of dealing with the situation.