‘I’ll find out,’ Gilbert said, glad of a break. The boss in this tour-leader mode wasn’t easy to take, particularly when the tour party consisted of only one individual.
@@@@@He didn’t need to go far to the left to see the lights of a car moving along Lansdown Road. On the other side were the offices used by the Admiralty. He also spotted a road opposite.
Returning to Diamond, he reported what he’d seen.
‘This is the place, then. Somewhere in this area, Beckford sunk a large pond filled with gold and silver fish.’
‘Is that what we’re looking for?’
‘Quiet, I’m getting my bearings. Nearby he came to a major obstruction in the shape of a lane leading to a farm. It was one right of way he couldn’t ignore. To continue the walk he was forced to go underground. So what did he do? He made a virtue out of necessity and created a seventy-foot grotto. You know what a grotto is?’
‘Like a cave?’
‘Except this one had to be a tunnel. That’s what I hope to find if it’s still here. Where’s the flashlight?’
Gilbert switched it on and passed it over.
Diamond swung the beam this way and that, patrolling the margins of the thicket. ‘Some time in 1991 there was subsidence along the road and it caused major traffic problems. My hunch is that it happened around here due to Beckford’s tunnelling. The walk went very close to the road at this point.’
The significance of the grotto wasn’t lost on Gilbert. He could see what was coming. He didn’t fancy plunging into the brambles and getting scratched all over just to satisfy a theory of Diamond’s.
‘I think there’s a gap here,’ Diamond called from the other side. ‘I can’t get through myself, but you might.’
Resigned, Gilbert joined him and saw where the beam was picking out a space between the long, prickly shoots. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘I’m not sure. Hole in the ground. Steps, maybe. Mind you don’t fall in. Take the flashlight.’
More intent on avoiding injury than finding anything, Gilbert dipped his head and edged under a vicious-looking branch. If he showed willing, he might get a reprieve. ‘Can’t see much,’ he said, rubbing spiderwebs from his face.
‘There’s a way through. There has to be,’ Diamond told him.
A thorn pierced Gilbert’s trousers and dug into his leg. ‘I think I’ve reached my limit, guv.’
‘You’re shining the light the wrong way. Look to your left. Isn’t that a way through?’
Gilbert turned and got his face scratched. Wrestling with brambles would have been unwise by day. In this light it was madness. He was about to say so when he noticed something he was bound to report. ‘Some of these are bent right over. It looks as if someone else has been here before me.’
‘We must be close, then.’
We? Gilbert thought. There’s only one of us getting scratched to pieces.
Easing to his right to duck under an arch of thorns, he felt his foot against a hard, straight edge. ‘There may be something here.’ Gingerly he pushed his leg forward into a space above a flat, solid surface. ‘Steps, I think.’
‘Give me some light. I’m coming in,’ Diamond said, then swore as the first thorns made contact. By attacking the bush like a rugby forward he powered through to Gilbert’s side regardless of dis-comfort. ‘What I’d give for a chainsaw.’
With a probing foot he located the step for himself. ‘Let’s get down there.’
Together they battled the last of the prickles and forced their way down a flight of about ten steps.
‘Flashlight.’
They had reached an impasse. The light shone on a mass of ivy with branches like cables.
‘What’s behind it?’ Diamond thumped the butt end of the flashlight against the surface.
‘That’s the only light we’ve got,’ Gilbert warned him.
‘If we could rip some of this away…’ He tried getting a grip on the ivy. It didn’t yield.
‘Can I have the flashlight a moment? I think I can see what’s in the way.’
Low down, the beam showed what looked like vertical indented bands, largely covered in moss and creepers, but recognizable as corrugated iron.
‘Find the edge,’ Diamond said.
Not only did the light show them the limit of the iron barrier. It revealed a gap wide enough to squeeze through.
‘Someone has definitely been here.’
Gilbert went through and forced the gap wider for Diamond to follow.
‘Bloody hell.’
There was no longer any doubt that they’d found Beckford’s grotto, a tunnel stretching ahead for about twenty feet to where the roof seemed to have collapsed. There was rubble, too, imme-di ately in front of them.
‘Take care,’ Gilbert said.
Diamond wasn’t listening. He stumbled inside, picking a way over the debris with the flashlight and intermittently pointing the beam ahead towards a tall structure blocking the way.
Coated in dust, at first it looked like an extension of the rock all around it, but then he saw the faint gleam of metal and recog-nised the obstruction for what it was.
A horse trailer.
Without the flashlight, Paul Gilbert struggled to keep his footing while crossing the rubble. Up ahead, Diamond was oblivious to him, squeezing between the side of the trailer and the flints on the grotto wall.
‘This is what Rupert found,’ his voice carried back. ‘God knows how. Picking blackberries, maybe.’ He reached the back end where the door was. ‘A cheap little one-horse trailer, not the transport a top racehorse is used to. Do you carry a handkerchief?’
Gilbert edged along the wall and joined him. ‘Will tissues do?’
Diamond took what was offered and used it to avoid direct contact with his hand as he pulled open the door and shone the lamp inside.
Neither man spoke. The sight that confronted them demanded an interval of respect.
The remains lay along the left side of the trailer floor, pathetically like the proverbial bag of bones, recognisably equine, manifestly long dead, part skeleton, part leathery tissue. The legs, reduced mostly to bone, were bent under the torso and still covered to the knees in padded travel boots made from some artificial fabric. Anything left of the tail was entirely enclosed in a matching tail guard.
Diamond finally said, ‘No dignity in death, is there?’
‘Is it Hang-glider?’
‘Must be.’
‘Well preserved, considering.’
‘Partial mummification,’ Diamond said. ‘In conditions like this, cool and dry, it can happen, especially if there’s a through draught.’
‘So Rupert took the rug off a dead horse,’ Gilbert said, the distaste clear in his voice.
‘Shows how desperate he was. Give me a hand up. I’m going to check the head.’ Diamond climbed into the trailer, moved to the front and crouched down. ‘Not pretty, but more skin than bone,’ he informed Gilbert. ‘The bridle still fits snugly. Ah – and I see how it was done. The hole is precisely where it should be, front of the skull, just above midway between the ears and the eyes. They knew what they were doing.’
‘Destroying a champion,’ Gilbert said. ‘That’s what they were doing.’ He was in danger of getting emotional – not advisable in police work.
‘Don’t let it get to you, lad.’
‘I can’t see the logic in it.’
‘There’s a reason. There must be. Whether it rates as logic is another question.’ Diamond stood up and passed the light beam across the rest of the interior, looking for anything else that would yield information. ‘How the heck did they get the trailer in here?’ Automatically they’d slipped into speaking of more than one perpetrator. A set-up as complex as this was too much to have attempted alone.
‘You could drive an SUV across the field, no problem,’ Gilbert said without realising Diamond was steering him back to practicalities. ‘If the brambles and the barrier weren’t in the way, you could reverse the trailer part way down the stairs and then unhitch it and let it roll down. I’m assuming they killed the horse above ground?’