A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(42)

Hmm? No? Well, perhaps we can work on that, you and I, practise it a bit. Here. Take this blanket. Let me show you round.

Secret places, Paul thought. Special places to share with special friends. Or places where one could be alone. When one needed alone. Like now. Paul had never been here by himself, however. Today was his very first time.

He crept carefully into the centre of the dolmen and felt his way to the altar stone. Molelike, he ran his hands across its flat surface to the depression at its base, where the candles were. A Curiously Strong Mints tin was tucked into this depression as well as the candles, and inside were the matches, protected from the damp. Paul felt for this and brought it forth. He set his rucksack down and lit the first of the candles, fixing it with wax to the altar stone.

With a little bit of light, he felt less anxious about being alone in this damp, shadowy place. He looked round at the old granite walls, at the curving ceiling, at the pockmarked floor. Incredible that ancient man could build a structure like this, Mr. Guy had said. We think we have everything over the stone age, Paul, with our mobiles, our computers, and the like. Instant information to go along with our instant everything else. But look at this, my Prince, just look at this place. What have we built in the last one hundred years that we can declare will be standing in one hundred thousand more, eh? Nothing, that’s what. Here, Paul, take a look at this stone...

Which he had done, Mr. Guy’s hand warm on his shoulder as the fingers of his other hand followed the marks that hand upon hand upon hand before him had worn into the stone that stood guard to the secondary alcove where Mr. Guy kept his camp bed and blankets. Paul went there now, to that secondary alcove, his rucksack in his hand. He scooted behind the sentinel stone with another candle lit and Taboo at his heels. He placed his rucksack on the floor and his candle on the wooden box where melted wax marked the spot of dozens of candles placed there before it. He took one of the blankets from the camp bed for Taboo, folding it into a dogsized square and putting it on the cold stone floor. Taboo hopped onto it gratefully and circled three times to make it his own before settling down with a sigh. He lowered his head to his paws and fixed his eyes lovingly on Paul.

That dog thinks I mean you ill, my Prince.

But no. That was just Taboo’s way. He knew the important role he played in his master’s life—sole friend, sole companion until Mr. Guy had come along—and knowing his role, he liked Paul to know he knew his role. He couldn’t tell him, so instead he watched him: his every move, in every moment, during every day.

It was the same way Paul had watched Mr. Guy when they were together. And unlike other people in Paul’s life, Mr. Guy had never been bothered by Paul’s unwavering stare. Find this interesting, do you? he’d ask if he shaved while they were together. And he never poked fun at the fact that Paul himself—despite his age—did not yet need to shave. How short should I have it cut? he’d ask when Paul accompanied him to the barber in St. Peter Port. Have some care with those scissors, Hal. As you can see, I’ve got my man watching your moves. And he’d wink at Paul and give the signal that meant Friends Till We Die: fingers of his right hand crossed and placed against the palm of his left.

Till We Die had arrived.

Paul felt the tears coming, and he let them come. He wasn’t at home. He wasn’t at school. It was safe to miss him here. So he wept as much as he wanted to weep, till his stomach hurt and his eyelids were sore. And in the candlelight, Taboo watched him faithfully, in complete acceptance and perfect love.

Cried out at last, Paul realised he had to remember the good things that had come from knowing Mr. Guy: all the things he had learned in his company, all that he had come to value, and all that he had been encouraged to believe. We serve a greater purpose than just getting through life, his friend had told him more than once. We serve the purpose of clarifying the past in order to make the future whole. Part of their clarifying the past was going to be the museum. To that end, they had spent long hours in the company of Mr. Ouseley and his dad. From them and from Mr. Guy, Paul had learned the significance of items he once might have tossed heedlessly to one side: the odd buckle from a belt found on the grounds of Fort Doyle, hidden among the weeds and buried for decades till a storm beat the earth away from a boulder; the useless lantern from a car boot sale; the rusty medal; the buttons; the dirty dish. This island is a real burial ground, Mr. Guy had told him. We’re going to do some exhuming here. Would you like to be a part of that? The answer was easy. He wanted to be a part of anything that Mr. Guy was a part of.

So he threw himself into the museum work with Mr. Guy and Mr. Ouseley. Wherever he went on the island, he kept his eyes open for something to contribute to the vast collection. He’d finally found something. He’d ridden his bike all the miles southwest to La Congrelle, where the Nazis had built one of their ugliest watch towers: a futuristic concrete eruption on the land with slits for their antiaircraft guns to shoot down anything approaching the shore. He hadn’t gone looking for anything related to the five years of German occupation, however. Instead, he’d gone to have a look at the most recent car that had plummeted over the cliff.

La Congrelle possessed one of the few cliff tops on the island that were directly accessible by car. Other cliff tops one had to hike out to from a car park a safe distance away, but at La Congrelle one could drive to the very edge. It was a good spot for a suicide that one wished to be seen as an accident, because at the end of the road from Rue de la Trigale to the Channel, one merely had to veer to the right and accelerate the last fifty yards through the low-growing gorse and across the grass to the edge of the cliff. A final stomp on the accelerator as the land in front of the bonnet disappeared and the car would shoot over and plunge down to the rocks, end over end till it was stopped by a jagged barrier of granite, exploded into the water itself, or erupted into flames.