From my vantage point I scanned the area. In such treeless terrain it was difficult to hide, let alone disappear. Still no one. Where had that person gone?
I was about to return to Haraldsson’s house to wait for Willow and Kenny when the mist cleared a little by the water. I stared at it for a minute, then began rummaging in my bag for the scribbles I’d taken from Percy’s room. The rain tore at the paper the minute I opened it, and with water in my eyes, I was having trouble seeing it very well, but I held it up as best I could, and looked back at the shoreline. It was difficult to tell, but I thought perhaps Percy had been scribbling this shoreline. I walked a little farther across the Alexanders’ property in the general direction of Robert’s putting green and driving range. It was a work of art, really, ridiculous though it might be. It seemed to me it would have been easier to go to a real golf course, but that obviously wasn’t Robert’s way.
“It can’t be,” I believe I said out loud, as I began running toward the putting green. In a minute I was standing on the top of the mound that marked the end of the driving range. I walked quickly around it, but saw nothing. If Percy had found a tomb here, there had to be an entrance of some sort. At the top there was a small pipe protruding from the ground, a watering system for the course. A tarpaulin lay around it, with a garden hose coiled there. I yanked away the hose and the tarpaulin to reveal a large metal plate. It all looked very ordinary, just part of the irrigation system, ordinary, that is, unless you were looking for the entrance to a tomb. This was a hatch. I pulled at it for a minute, before I realized that it ran on a track. I had to sit on the dismally wet ground and brace my feet against the edge of it. In a second or two it started to slide back to reveal an old iron ladder leading down into the dark.
I descended past large stone slabs, into the inky darkness. At the bottom of the ladder there was actually a light switch. This tomb had been put to use rather more recently and by someone other than Bjarni the Wanderer. A stone tunnel led off to one side. I crouched over and made my way toward the light that seemed to come from a chamber beyond. At the end of the tunnel I was able to stand up. If there had been any question in my mind as to whether or not this was a tomb, that doubt was dispelled by the pile of skulls and bones stacked in a side chamber to my right.
So excited was I to find this tomb, that it took me a few minutes to accurately assess the situation in which I found myself. My first clue as to the precariousness of my position was the sight of the Gaudi chair that had once graced my sitting room. There was a small plastic bag on top of it which I didn’t bother to open because I pretty much knew what it would contain: Maya’s necklace, bracelet, and perhaps some cufflinks of Robert’s. Apparently Drever was not only scary, but a thief, pure and simple, stealing from his employers.
But then I entered a second side chamber to find that it contained two large wooden crates. It took a minute to use the small crowbar sitting on top of one to pry it open, see what was in it, and to close it up again. One quick look at the contents told me that Percy’s death was not really about furniture or a cauldron. It was about the quest itself and where it had taken him. As I turned, something else caught my eye, and the sight of it made me sick. A skull stared out from a niche in the room, as if it were an icon in a little shrine. This skull wore eyeglasses, one arm of which was held with a safety pin, one lens cracked and smeared with what must have been dried blood.
I had seen enough to know that Percy had died here. I had seen enough to know what was going on. I had seen enough to know that I had to get very far away from this place if I didn’t want to end up like Percy on a concrete slab in a bunker on Hoxa Head. I crouched down and headed back along the stone passageway as fast as I could, but I could hear the sound of the hatch closing as I hit the bottom rung of the ladder and looked up to see Drever Clark smiling down at me.
I still had the crowbar, and I did the only thing I could think of. I hauled myself up a few more steps and smashed at his fingers on the edge of the hatch, hitting as hard as I possibly could. I heard a grunt of pain, and for a moment the hatch stopped moving. It was long enough for me to get up and out, but not long enough to get away. Drever had recovered sufficiently to hit me with the hose. I stumbled, then tried to run, but slipped in the mud. The next thing I knew Drever was standing over me with a shovel. “Say good-bye,” he said. He was still smiling.
As the shovel came down, I tried to put my arms over my head, but somewhere in my frantic brain I knew it wouldn’t save me. Suddenly there was a frightening sound, more howl than anything else. Drever stopped, the shovel in midair, as two dogs went airborne, straight for his neck. He went down in a scream of pain, Oddi and Svein all over him. There was blood everywhere. I just lay there for a minute, stunned, unable to think what to do. Then I heard a voice calling my name. “Run, Lara,” Willow yelled. “We have your back.”
I staggered to my feet, then turned to see Robert Alexander, gun in hand, sprinting across the lawn toward me. Willow was running from the direction of the hedge, Kenny a few yards behind her. Thor was just ducking through the hole in the hedge right behind Kenny. Robert stopped and took aim just as Willow hurled herself at him. She grabbed him from behind and held on. Robert fired, but missed, then shrugged Willow off, and smashed her head so hard with the butt of the gun that she was unconscious before she hit the ground. Then Robert turned the gun on her.
“No!” Kenny screamed, lunging at Robert, who in turn staggered and fell back. The gun flew out of Robert’s hand and arched through the sky. In a second, Kenny had his hands around Robert’s neck and was throttling him. I started for the other gun, but Thor beat me to it.
“Bad man,” he shouted looking at Drever and waving the gun around.
It was bedlam. The wind was howling, the dogs were snarling, Drever was screaming, Kenny was sobbing, and Thor kept shouting, “Bad man, bad man,” over and over. Over by The Wasteland, Sigurd was gesturing and calling out to Thor, I suppose, but he couldn’t be heard over the din. The only people who were silent were Willow, lying cold and lifeless, the dark hair framing her pale, pale face now matted with blood and mud, and me, whose vocal cords had unaccountably shut down completely. I kept trying to say something, but could make no sound.
There was another shot, and we froze where we were and turned to look. “Stop!” Maya Alexander screamed. She was standing few yards away, a shotgun in her hands. Unlike Thor, she looked as if she knew exactly how to use it. Stop we did, every single one of us, maybe even the wind. For a moment there was a deathlike silence, as if the whole world were holding its breath. Then Robert straightened up and almost smiled.
“Give me the gun, darling,” Robert said. Maya still stood there, gun in hand, waving it back and forth as if to keep it fixed on all us. “Maya, darling? The gun, please.”
The tiny rational part of my brain that was still functioning, the part charged with the onerous responsibility of trying to ensure my survival said, “Say something now or it’s over.” The shotgun was pointed at me.
“Don’t give him the gun, Maya. Your husband and Dr-ever are drug dealers. You can go and see for yourself. They are hiding drugs in an old tomb under the putting green. They killed the man in the bunker. His spectacles are still down there. I think his blood is, too. They stabbed him and then they dumped him in the bunker. He crawled up on to the slab before he died, Maya. He died slowly. The murderer you fear is right in your house.”