Gold by Gemini Read online

  I examined the interior, avoiding the ghastly spectacle of the seal pen barriers directly below and trying not to hear the sea sounds sucking and gasping. Everything looked fairly solid. The metal was rusted but mostly intact and hard. I couldn’t bend it or shift any of the palings. Cast iron, the old Bessemer process. The concrete only reinforced living rock, I saw, so the chances of the base giving way under my weight were virtually nil. It was exactly five feet wide. That was where my luck ended. The stone, concrete and ironware hadn’t been displaced or touched since the whole thing was first made. Bad news, Lovejoy.

  Which left the recess. Presumably the tunnel ran to emerge somewhere back there. I examined the iron wartime doors first. Both were rusted in place. That’s modern metal for you. Rubble had fallen from the walls and made it difficult for me to squeeze in. I could hear water trickling and dripping in the dank blackness. Would there be bats? Peat. It stank of peat. Did peat give off fumes like those that gassed you in coal mines? I had a pencil torch. But, I worried, are those little bulbs electrically insulated so they can’t touch off an itchy explosive gas? Why the hell is all this never written on the bloody things? They always miss essential instructions off everything you buy nowadays. I was so angry I took the risk, cursing and swearing at manufacturers. No bang. The light showed me a brick-lined space about four feet wide. The start of the tunnel. The sea down below gave a louder shuffle, which made my heart lurch. A few soldierly graffiti indicated the last time anyone had stood there. Dust covered the floor. The tunnel’s infall began a couple of paces from the iron doors.

  It had probably been deserted after the war. Weather, perhaps mostly rain and seeping water, had weakened the tunnel walls. Bexon could never have been here. I edged back into the daylight, still pressing the surface with my foot as I went. No sun seemed to strike into the sea-washed cleft. You’d think they would have built the seal pen to catch a lot of sun, if only for yesteryear’s holidaying spectators. Lord, what a day out it must have been. I’d have paid not to come. I wasn’t unduly perturbed when I didn’t see the rope exactly where I’d left it. Ropes hanging free swing about, especially in winds. Actually I couldn’t remember knotting it carefully on an iron upright but I’d worked it out. I’d soon catch it as it flicked, past.

  I looked about from the cage. The sea had risen somewhat but could never reach the pulpit. There was no sign of a tidal mark this high. Safe as houses. The trouble was I couldn’t see the rope at all, flicking about or otherwise.

  Oddly it didn’t concern me much at first. It was probably caught up somewhere, maybe on a clump of heather or on a small scag of rock face. It had to get blown free sooner or later, hadn’t it? Hadn’t it?

  ‘Lovejoy.’ Rink was waving from across the crevasse.

  I didn’t answer immediately. All I could think of was rope.

  ‘Yoo-hoo,’ he called. Not a smile. That’s the sort of character you get in antiques nowadays. No soul. He’d won hands down and not even the glimmer of a grin. He was alone.

  ‘What?’ It took me two goes to croak it out. It suddenly seemed a long way over there. And back up the cliff. And down. It was a hell of a long way to everywhere. Bleeding hell.

  ‘Find it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then good luck, Lovejoy. That’s all I can say. Good luck.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ll need it.’

  He sat on the platform. The swine had a hamper. He took out some sandwiches and a flask. He seemed prepared for a long siege. It all seemed so exasperatingly strange at that moment. There was Rink, in his smart suit, noshing an elegant picnic breakfast. And there was me, stuck in an iron pulpit like a caged fly in a gruesome grotto. His very appearance of normality was grotesque.

  ‘I can climb out, Rink,’ I managed to squeak after swallowing a few times.

  ‘No, Lovejoy.’ He was maddeningly calm. ‘No. Look at the cliff.’

  I’d already done that. I didn’t need to do it again.

  ‘Where’s the rope?’ I called lamely.

  ‘Quite safe.’ He poured a hot drink for himself. ‘Don’t try.’

  In a panic I jumped and caught on the incomplete roof of the pulpit. Better to try climbing out now while I was fresh than after being trapped a whole day – week? Something cracked sharply. The rocks nearby my left side spattered with ugly suddenness. My cheek ran warm. I dropped back. Rink was smiling now. He had a double-barrelled shotgun.

  ‘I won’t run out of cartridges, Lovejoy,’ he assured me.

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘I’m only anxious to preserve your life.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. Maybe Algernon had heard the gun and would come searching. But there were a lot of hunters after pigeons knocking about. I’d seen them about the middle of the island. One more shot wouldn’t be noticed. Anyway I couldn’t encourage Rink to keep on using that thing. It was a modern hammerless cartridge ejector, I saw with scorn, when you can still find brilliantly engraved antique hammer-locks of the early percussion period. They’re even cheaper than good modern guns, the burke. He could have used a luscious Forsyth scent bottle fulminate percussion weapon, damascus-barrelled and silver-engraved. What a slob. Honestly, some people, I thought. It really shows a typical low mentality.

  ‘You’d better start, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘Guessing.’ He waved a sandwich at me. ‘I can wait. Every guess you give will be painstakingly investigated, Lovejoy. If the box is where you say it is I’ll return and drop your rope over.’

  ‘And if not?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be allowed as many guesses as you like. Take your time.’

  ‘How do I know you’ll come back?’

  He smiled again then. What worried me was that he wasn’t sincere. It should have tipped me off but I suppose I was too scared right then. Oh, I know he’d been painstaking and finding me had cost him a quid or two. And he’d risked a hell of a lot, killing Dandy Jack like he did. But that spark was missing. I should have known. Every single genuine collector I’ve known is always on heat. Mention the Sutton Hoo gold-and-garnet Suffolk cape-clasps to a collector and his eyes glaze. He pants like a bulldog on bait. He quivers. There’s music in his ears and stars glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Your actual collector’s a hot-blooded animal. Not Rink. I’ll bet he did pure mathematics at school. I ought to have realized. Unfortunately I wasn’t in a thinking mood.

  ‘I’ll shout for help,’ I threatened. Some threat.

  ‘I dare you. Ever seen lead shot ricochet?’ He was right. One blast directly into my pulpit would mash me like a spud in a grinder.

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ I said. He took no notice, just sat noshing and gazing at the scenery. ‘What if I don’t guess at all?’ I shouted over.

  ‘I can wait. Day after day, Lovejoy. You’ll die there.’

  ‘And the knowledge dies with me, Rink.’

  ‘Don’t be illogical, Lovejoy. If you know,’ he said reasonably, ‘it’s a consequence of your visit to where you are now. Or else, it stems from what’s in the copy of Bexon’s little books which you carry on your person. As soon as you’re dead I shall come down and have access to both sources of information.’

  ‘I don’t have them any more.’ Lying on principle.

  ‘They’re not at your bungalow,’ he called. ‘So you must have.’

  ‘My bloke’ll come searching soon.’ Get that, actually threatening a maniac with Algernon. The cavalry.

  ‘I’ve taken care of that.’ He sounded as if he had, too.

  ‘Er, you have?’

  ‘I left them a note saying you’d gone home. Told them both to follow you as soon as possible, urgently.’

  ‘I’ll do a deal,’ I called. He said nothing. ‘Rink?’

  ‘You’re in no position to do any dealing, Lovejoy.’

  ‘All right,’ I said at last. ‘I know where the stuff is.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No. I want. . . a guar
antee.’ That’s a laugh, I thought, an antiques dealer asking for a guarantee. A record. It’d make a good headline: ANTIQUE DEALER DEMANDS GUARANTEE AS TYPHOON GRIPS OCEAN . . .

  ‘You’re inventing, Lovejoy.’ He was looking intently at me.

  ‘I’m not. I do know. It’s true.’

  And all of a sudden it was.

  I yelped aloud as if I’d been kicked, actually screamed and brought Rink to his feet. I knew exactly where Bexon had put the gold. I could take anybody there. Now. A place I’d never seen, but the precise spot there and I knew it almost down to the bloody inch. I could see it in my mind’s eye. The wheel. The water. The Roman coffin. Splashing water and the pompous lady of the sketch in her daft one-wheeled carriage. I was smiling, even, then chuckling, then laughing. What a lovely mind the old man must have had. How sad I’d never met him.

  ‘I know!’ I was laughing and applauding, actually clapping like a lunatic as if a great orchestra played. I laughed and cheered and jigged, banging my palms and taking bows. I bounced and shook my bars. ‘The old bastard!’ I bawled out ecstatically, laughing and letting the tears run down my face. I practically floated on air with joy. If I’d tried I could have flown up and landed running. ‘The beautiful old bastard!’ I roared louder still with delighted laughter. ‘The old bugger’s had us on all along!’ And I was on the selfsame island, the very ground where the Roman Suetonius had landed, pouring his Gemini Legion on the Douglas strand. History was wrong. Bexon was right. The clever old sod.

  ‘Where is it? Where?’ Rink was on his feet, puce with rage.

  ‘Get stuffed, Rink!’ I screamed merrily, capering. ‘It deserves me, not a frigging cold lizard like you, you –’

  ‘I’ll –’ He was raising the gun in a rage when he seemed to jerk his legs backwards. Perhaps he slipped. He gave a rather surprised but muted call, not even a shout, and tumbled forwards. The shotgun clattered on the platform. I watched frozen as he moved out into the free air above the yawning seal pen and started to turn downwards. It was a kind of formal progression. I can see him yet, gravely progressing in a curve, arms out and legs splayed as if to catch a wind. Only the scream told it wasn’t as casual as all that. It began an instant before the body dropped tidily on to the iron stakes on the crumbling stone barrier. Rink seemed to move silently once or twice as if wanting to settle the iron more comfortably through his impaled trunk. An incoming wave began its whooshing rush at the inlet’s horrible mouth. His limbs jerked once before the sea rushed over him. An arm moved slowly as if reaching into the trapped lagoon of the seal pen. The wave sighed back, stained dark. Oddly, it only became a deeper green from his blood. There was no red. I was staring at him some time. He must have been dead on impact, I guessed. What a terrible, horrendous word that is. Impact. There’s nothing left once you’ve said a word like that is there? Impact. I was shivering from head to foot. Impact. I was violently sick inside the cage.

  The worst of it was the sea kept moving him. It seemed as if he was alive still, trying to rearrange matters so as to make a slight improvement in the circumstances in which his corpse now unfortunately found itself. The start of a demented housekeeping in his new resting-place. I turned away and retched and retched. Lighter now, I thought wryly, maybe an easier climb.

  ‘Lovejoy,’ a pale shaky voice called. I could see nobody.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Nichole. Are you safe?’

  ‘Is there a rope up there?’ A pause. Please don’t let her have fainted or anything. ‘Nichole?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice carried distantly down the cliff. I strained to see her. ‘It’s fastened to the wood.’

  ‘Don’t pull it off!’ I howled in panic. ‘Don’t touch the fastening. Just chuck the free end over. And keep back from the edge.’ I repeated the instructions time after time in a demented yell until I saw the rope come, I tugged it, swinging on it as a test. ‘Does it look firm to you?’ I shouted.

  ‘Yes.’ She didn’t sound so sure. I swarmed up, holding the free rope between my feet like I’d seen circus climbers do to lessen the strain on my hands. It seemed an age but, knowing me, couldn’t have been longer than a couple of millisecs.

  I sprawled gasping on the rock at Nichole’s feet. Why hadn’t I noticed it had started raining? The poor lass was weeping but quite honestly my sympathy for others was a bit used up. I crawled away from the edge and rose shakily. We embraced, Nichole trembling and heartbroken and me quivering from relief and eagerness. It wasn’t far to Bexon’s hoard.

  ‘I was so afraid,’ Nichole said. ‘You were so calm and brave. Edward was like a mad thing. He kept making me help.’

  ‘Thanks for the rescue, love,’ I said. I moved us further inland. Neither of us wanted to see the inlet and its seal pen ever again.

  ‘Is . . . is Edward . . .?’

  ‘Let’s go straight home.’ I comforted her as we walked towards the sheep. A group was watching. They looked so absolutely bloody calm. What right had they to be so unconcerned while I’d nearly snuffed it? I was furious and made them scatter with a sudden shout to teach them a lesson, the smug bastards. It was all right for them. They were safe in a field of their own.

  ‘Don’t we have to tell the authorities?’ Nichole asked. ‘Poor Edward.’

  ‘In a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you my bungalow first. It’s in Groundle Glen. Not far. You can rest there. I’ve got something to do. I’ll only be a few minutes.’

  Janie and Algernon would be gone, Rink had said.

  We got through the wire into the fold. The sheep had assembled on the landward side. I avoided their accusing eyes as we made our way over the humped field and clambered down to the overgrown railway. Well, I thought defensively, they could at least have looked just a little bit anxious on my behalf. People are far too bloody complacent these days. Just let a sheep get into trouble and it expects shepherds, collie dogs, a wholesale search, the lot. Sheep have even got a parable to themselves, selfish swine.

  ‘Look, love,’ I said. ‘About poor Edward.’

  ‘He was obsessed with these fanciful stories,’ she sniffed. ‘He made me –’

  ‘Yes, darling.’ I explained how we’d better just go. People would assume it was some ghastly hunting accident. Nothing could be done for him now anyway. She took it really well. I said she was a brave lass.

  Neither Nichole nor I looked back at the inlet, nor down into the water. We left the platform with Rink’s gun and its open hamper. The seagulls would handle what was left.

  I was still smouldering when we came within sight of the ruined terminus. I pointed out the bungalows across the valley from among the trees.

  ‘See that one with the smoking chimney?’ I said.

  ‘Near the blue Lagonda?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, er, yes.’ Well, well. Janie was supposed to have gone chasing to the ferry. ‘Anyhow, three roofs to your right. That’s it.’ I gave her the key. ‘Wait there for me. I’ll be back smartish.’

  ‘Edward’s car’s there too,’ she sniffed. ‘We had the bungalow next to the shop place.’ Cunning old Edward.

  ‘I’ll not be long.’ I saw her off where the footpath wound down from the railway. She kissed me. Twice, she turned to wave. I watched her go. I didn’t move until I saw her slight figure appear on the valley floor below. She walked out upon the wooden bridge and turned to wave again, shading her eyes at me. I waved and stayed put. She stepped on to the metalled road, heading up to the cluster of bungalows.

  I ducked behind foliage and raced along the railway track.

  You can’t blame me, really. The law of treasure trove says firmly that the person finding precious archaeological stuff is entitled to the treasure’s value. No messing about. So if you find another priceless miraculous dump of ‘old pewter’, as it was called, like that pop singer did at Water Newton – incidentally now the brilliant centrepiece of early Christian silver exhibitions the world over – you claim its market value. The coroner fixes the money for you with ind
ependent assessors. Naturally, you can’t keep the actual trove itself. That usually gets stuck in the British Museum or somewhere. But you get the market value. Fair’s fair. The trouble is that two equal finders are made to share equally, by the nasty old coroner, who cruelly wouldn’t trust Lovejoy to be reasonable. After what I’d been through I deserved at least sixty per cent, I told myself as I hurtled through the undergrowth along the steep hillside. If not seventy. In fact, I was reasoning as I ran breathlessly by the ruined terminus and started down the steep stepped path towards the waterlogged forest floor and the clumps of palm trees, I really deserved it all.

  There must have been torrential rain somewhere on the uplands. The river was in hectic spate. Even the lagoon water was swirling. I noticed that several of the small overgrown weed islands were partly submerged. The run was taking it out of me, probably the after effects of the climb and Edward Rink. I was astonished to realize blood was running down my face. My own blood. Then I remembered, just before fainting with fright, that he’d taken a shot at me. A rock chip had caught my face. It really had been a hard day.

  I slowed to a jog along the narrow river path, then a walk. Finally, I reached where the tributary beck trickled beneath its elegant bridge. I had to sit on a wayside stone for breath. Only now it was no trickle. It was a tumbling spouting cascade which had dropped an octave from an innocent lightweight chuckle to a deep threatening lusty boom. Spray watered ferns high above and the ornate bridge was quivering with the sustained impact of the falling water. God help fishes. I rested longer than I meant to.