Chapter 20
I squeezed my wet body through the low section of tunnel that separated the cavern from the main passage.
I had tried to dry myself with my coat but was still so frozen I was seriously worried I could be the next Samir, the next Jimmy.
Yet another death in this cold place. I could still hardly believe that I’d found Lewis’s body instead of Jasmine’s.
Where the hell was she?
Halfway through the tunnel I stopped. I became convinced the ceiling and floor were contracting, squeezing me, and I began to panic, trying to breathe, but shivering so hard I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. There was a screaming pain in my head.
I’m going to die here, I thought, and that thought forced me to move. I didn’t want to die alone, in the dark.
I knew that hypothermia could bring on hallucinations. Victims had been known to tear their clothes off, believing they were too hot. Was this how Samir had felt? He’d been found outside the caves, but had he been in here at some point, in the pitch-blackness, terrified like I was?
I would like to report that I had some sort of mystical experience, that I saw a ghostly figure reach out to me, urge me on.
But there was nothing like that. Just desperation.
Fear. I forced my numb limbs to move, pulling myself forward until I reached the tunnel and was able to push myself upright, leaning against the wall, teeth chattering, ice-cold water dripping off me.
I knew I needed to get to my car, to turn the heaters on.
That was my only hope. It was only forty feet away, but that might as well have been a mile.
I fell to my hands and knees. Holly was going to lose both her brother and her boyfriend on the same day unless I could make myself move.
It’s in your head, I tried to convince myself. Your body still works.
I got up again, staggered forward. Made myself walk.
And then I saw a light ahead of me. Was this it? That mystical moment? An angel, come to take me?
I might have been losing it, but I quickly realized it wasn’t a celestial light. It was the beam from a torch. It bounced towards me and then, not an angel, not a mystical one, anyway. It was Holly.
‘Patrick,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’
I tried to speak, but my teeth were chattering too much for me to get any words out. I pointed back towards the cavern and saw that my hand was shaking, too.
‘Where are Lewis and Jasmine?’
Again, I pointed back, unable to speak. It was a good job I couldn’t, because if Holly had gone past me and left me alone, I might have died. I needed her to help me – and thankfully she realized it, too.
She snapped into practical mode. She led me to the mouth of the cave, said, ‘Wait here,’ then hurried down the path.
She had come in Zack and Miranda’s Land Rover.
I heard the boot open and close and then she was back, holding a towel and a blanket.
I was hunched over, almost convulsing, hardly able to stand.
My hands and feet were in agony, my breathing quick and shallow.
‘We need to get these wet clothes off you,’ Holly said.
I tried to unlace my boots, but my fingers were useless. Quickly and efficiently, Holly helped me with my sweater, then my boots and my jeans. She told me to take off my underwear, too.
I didn’t like this. Didn’t want to be so vulnerable in front of her, naked and shivering, my skin almost blue. But my need to be warm, to survive, overrode my masculine pride. I didn’t want to die like Samir had died, in this remote, rocky place.
Holly towelled me dry, then wrapped me in the big fleecy blanket she had found in the boot of Zack and Miranda’s car. Finally, she put a furry hat on my head, not unlike the one Jasmine had been wearing earlier, which she’d also found in the boot.
‘Let’s get you into the car,’ she said.
Leaving my wet clothes and coat behind, she led me barefoot down the path. I was dazed, my IQ temporarily as low as my body temperature. I couldn’t speak; I could barely form thoughts. I could only stare blankly at the sky as flakes of snow swirled around me, landing in my hair, stinging my face.
Holly opened the passenger door of the Land Rover and I got in while she sat behind the wheel, turned the engine on and cranked up the heating. Thankfully, the car warmed up quickly, my shivering abated and, finally, I was able to speak again.
‘You saved my life.’
She threw her arms around me, her cheek warm against mine.
I was happier in that moment than I had been for a long time.
I was alive. Holly had saved me. She loved me, and there could be nothing better in the world than the feel of her warm body against mine, of her arms around me. Tears stung my closed eyes.
Slowly, she pulled away from me and said, ‘What happened? Where are Lewis and Jasmine?’
The moment of happiness slipped away.
‘I’m sorry. Lewis is dead. He’s … I don’t know what happened, but his body is in the pool inside the cavern. That’s why I was soaked.’
The tears came immediately.
‘I’m sorry, Holly.’
‘Are you 100 per cent sure?’
I nodded.
‘What about Jasmine?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t find her. Both their flashlights were there, but there’s no sign of her. What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to look.’ Holly reached for the door handle.
I tried to grab her arm. ‘Holly, no, it’s not safe. And you don’t … you really don’t want to see Lewis’s body, do you?’
She hesitated.
‘We need to call the police. I have Susan Williams’s number in my phone.’
She found it and called Susan, who answered straight away. Holly explained that she needed to come to the caves immediately and, thankfully, Susan was still on the peninsula.
Holly looked at me. ‘I think we should get you to the hospital, make sure you don’t have hypothermia.’
I knew the hospital was as far away as the police station.
‘I’m fine. I’m warming up now.’
The snow fell lightly, small flakes touching the car’s windows and vanishing instantly.
I had stopped shivering but still felt cold, despite the heater that blew warm air on to me and the plush thickness of the blanket.
I didn’t think I had hypothermia. I was functioning.
My thoughts were clear. No hallucinations. My teeth were no longer chattering.
‘What happened?’ Holly asked, eyeing the entrance to the caves. Tears glistened on her cheeks. Outside, the snow was already beginning to fall more heavily. ‘Why did you come here? It wasn’t really because you wanted to see the Serpent Stone, was it?’
This was not easy. She had just learned that her brother was dead. Maybe it would be better to wait till the police were here, or until we got back.
‘Patrick, for fuck’s sake. Tell me. Why did you come here?’
‘Because … this isn’t going to be easy for you to hear, but …’
‘Spit it out. Please.’
‘I thought Lewis was planning to kill Jasmine.’
‘What?’
I told her everything that had led me here. My sense that Lewis had wanted a witness to his conversation with Jasmine. Overhearing the call during the night and the conversation between Lewis and Miranda outside the pub. The words he’d used: Trust me. I’m going to fix it.
As I spoke, she kept shaking her head, her back and shoulders stiff with tension. I noticed, too, how she drew away from me – only an inch or two, but in the confines of the car her body language was clear. She was repelled by what I was saying.
She didn’t believe me.
‘No. It can’t be true. It’s insane.’ She shook her head again. ‘I know Lewis can be a selfish prick sometimes, but he would never murder someone. He likes Jasmine!’
She was still using the present tense, unable to accept that Lewis was dead.
This wasn’t surprising. She hadn’t seen him.
It was all too new. Seeing fresh tears in her eyes and the horrified way she was looking at me, I knew I’d made a mistake.
I should have waited to tell her the real reason I had come here.
Allowed her some time for it to sink in.
‘Holly.’ I said her name, reaching over to her, and she pulled away further. I was torn. I wanted to comfort her. I also felt compelled to tell the truth.
Except … Lewis was the one who was dead.
‘Maybe I’m wrong.’
‘You are,’ she said. ‘You must be.’ She repeated herself, still referring to Lewis as if was alive: ‘He really likes Jasmine. He doesn’t care that she and Dad are getting married and planning to have kids.’
‘I know.’
‘You still think he was planning to kill her, don’t you? You’re just trying to mollify me.’
I didn’t reply immediately. Right now, I didn’t know what to think. The wipers came on, shifting snow from the windscreen. How long would it take Susan to get here? I wanted her to arrive, for someone official to take over, but there was no sign of her.
‘I’m really sorry, Holly,’ I said, reaching across to her again, talking in a soft voice. ‘Maybe I’m not right about his … intentions, but what I found in the caves, it’s … there’s no question.’
She nodded, and that was when the tears came properly, and this time she let me put my arms around her, her tears warm against my neck, fingers clutching at the blanket I was wrapped in.
She cried for two or three minutes and then pulled away suddenly, searching in the glove compartment for tissues. She blew her nose.
‘Talk me through it again,’ she said. ‘Why you came here.’
‘But I might have been wrong.’
‘Tell me. I want to hear it again.’
I went through it, knowing this wouldn’t be the last time I had to explain the train of thought that had led me to the caves.
When I’d finished, she said, ‘If he was planning to kill Jasmine, why is he the one who’s dead? And where the fuck is she?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps … he tried to push her, but she fought back. Or she realized what he was going to do and shoved him before he had a chance.’
‘Or she was planning to kill him all along.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘I don’t know, Patrick. It makes as much sense as you believing my brother was planning to murder Jasmine.’ She put her hands in her hair. ‘Oh God, you can’t tell the police about your crazy suspicions. You can’t tell anyone. We have to think about the family’s reputation.’
I stared at her, hardly able to believe what she’d said. ‘I can’t not tell them.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it might be the truth. Surely that’s more important than anyone’s reputation?
If he was planning to murder Jasmine, the police need to know.
They can talk to Miranda, corroborate what I overheard.
Most importantly, if Jasmine’s missing, they’re going to need as much information as possible to find her. I can’t lie to the police.’
I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She didn’t look directly at me, but she didn’t shrink away either.
And then a car was coming along the road. It was Susan. She parked in front of us and came over to the car. She was wearing her police uniform, with a high-vis yellow vest on top. She rapped on the window and Holly opened the door on her side.
Susan looked at me, wrapped in my blanket.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
Holly shook her head and, although I hated doing something she’d asked me not to, I really didn’t see that I had a choice.
I told Susan everything I’d just told Holly.
She listened, standing in the doorway of the car, snow falling heavily all around her.
It was already settling on the ground, on the surface of the road.
I noticed something else, too, as I talked, something I hadn’t spotted before.
A few hundred feet to the east was a darker shape.
It appeared to be a small building, no bigger than a hut.
It seemed incongruous, and I wasn’t sure, with the snow swirling around me, if it was even real. I blinked and it vanished.
When I’d finished, Holly said, ‘It can’t be true. Lewis wouldn’t kill anyone. He doesn’t have it in him.’ Her voice caught. ‘Didn’t have it in him.’
‘Let’s keep an open mind, shall we?’ Susan said.
She went back to her car to grab a heavy-duty flashlight. She made a call on her phone, then came back over to us.
‘I need you two to wait here in your car. I’m going to take a look.’
She headed off towards the entrance to the caves then vanished from sight.
Holly and I sat in silence for a minute. Then she said, ‘He’s really gone, isn’t he?’
I said that he was, expecting more tears but, instead, she nodded once.
After another few seconds of silence she said, ‘Lewis loved it here. You know he wanted to be a poet when we were teenagers? He used to come up here, like he was Wordsworth or something, and write his poems. They were terrible.’
She laughed and sniffed at the same time.
‘Miranda used to mock him, and Dad said poetry was a waste of time, but Mum used to encourage him. She would always ask him to write her a poem for her birthday and for Christmas instead of a present. And then, when she died, he stood up at her funeral and read this poem he’d written.
It was beautiful. Genuinely. He actually did have talent.
Miranda said he must have copied it from somewhere, but it was really him. ’
‘I could tell he was creative,’ I said.
‘He was. The problem was, his whole life, he wanted to impress Dad. To win his respect. He was never going to do that with poetry.’
I heard a noise outside and saw Susan coming back towards us through the snow.
Holly put down the window, and Susan said, ‘I’m sorry, Holly.
’ Then she moved away from the car, looking around her at the weather, squinting into the snow.
I heard her swear, before getting back on her phone.
She paced around, frowning deeply. It was almost dark now, the remaining light bleeding from the sky.
Sunset on New Year’s Eve, though midnight was still eight hours away.
She came back and addressed me. ‘I’m going to need to take a statement from you.’
‘Sure.’
‘Hold on,’ Holly said. ‘Aren’t you going to try to find Jasmine? And get Lewis out of there?’
‘We will. It just might take a while.’
‘How long?’
Susan gestured towards the sky, all traces of blue smothered by thick clouds that hung so low I thought I might be able to touch them.
She was covered in thick snow which clung to her clothes and hair and glistened on her eyelashes.
I thought about Jasmine, suitably dressed for a short trip to the caves but not for a prolonged spell in this bitter weather which we already knew could kill.
‘It’s difficult to say. But I’m afraid that, right now, it looks like we’re on our own.’