A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(43)

The car in question that Paul went to see had met its end by the last method. There was little left of it but twisted metal and one blackened seat, something of a disappointment after the long bike ride in the wind. Had there been something more, Paul might have made the perilous descent to investigate. As there wasn’t, he explored the area of the watch tower instead. A rock fall had occurred, he saw, recent by the look of the stones and the ravaged nature of the ground from which they had become dislodged. The newly bared stones were devoid of thrift and sea campion that grew in tufts along the cliffs. And the boulders that had toppled towards the water below had no guano on them, although their older companion chunks of Icart gneiss were streaked with it.

This was a most dangerous place to be, and as an islander born and bred, Paul knew it. But he’d learned from Mr. Guy that whenever the land opened itself to man, there were secrets that often came into the daylight. For that reason, he scouted round.

He left Taboo on the cliff top and picked his way across the face of the gash left by the rock fall. He was careful to keep a firm hold on a fixed piece of granite whenever he moved his feet, and in this manner he slowly traversed the fa?ade of the cliff, working his way downwards like a crab scouting for a crevice in which to hide.

It was at the midway point that he found it, so encrusted with half a century of soil, dried mud, and pebbles that at first he thought it was nothing more than an elliptical stone. But when his foot dislodged it, he saw the glint of what looked like metal marking a curve that emerged from within the object itself. So he picked it up.

He couldn’t examine it there, midway down the cliff, so he carried it tucked between his chin and his chest back to the top. There, with Taboo snuffling at the object eagerly, he used a pocket knife and then his fingers to reveal what the earth had kept secret for so many years. Who knew how it had come to be there? The Nazis hadn’t bothered to clean up their mess once they realised the war was lost and the invasion of England was never going to happen. They merely surrendered, and like the defeated invaders who had occupied the island in times before them, they left behind whatever they found too inconvenient to carry. So near to a watch tower once occupied by soldiers, it was no wonder that their detritus continued to be unearthed. While this would have been no personal possession of anyone, it certainly would have been something the Nazis might have found useful had the Allies, guerrillas, or Resistance fighters successfully made a landing beneath them.

Now, in the semi-dark of the special place he and Mr. Guy had shared, Paul reached for his rucksack. He’d intended to hand his find over to Mr. Ouseley at Moulin des Niaux, his first solo, pride-filled contribution. But he couldn’t do that now—not after this morning—so he would keep it here where it would be safe.

Taboo raised his head and watched as Paul unfastened the rucksack’s buckles. He reached inside and brought out the old towel in which he’d wrapped his treasure. In the way of all seekers of history’s nuggets, he unfolded the towel from round his find to give it a final and rapt inspection before placing it for safekeeping within a place of security. The hand grenade probably wasn’t actually dangerous at all, Paul thought. The weather would have battered it for years before it became buried in the earth and the pin that might have once detonated the explosive within it was most likely rusted immovably in place. But still, it wasn’t wise to carry it round in his rucksack. He didn’t need Mr. Guy or anyone else to tell him that prudence suggested he put it somewhere that no one would come across it. Just till he decided what else he could do with it. Within the secondary chamber of the dolmen, where he and Taboo now hid, was the cache. This, too, Mr. Guy had shown him: a natural fissure between two of the stones that comprised the wall of the dolmen. That wouldn’t have been here originally, Mr. Guy had said. But time, weather, the movement of the earth...Nothing manmade withstands nature completely. The cache was just to one side of the camp bed and to the uninitiated it appeared to be a simple gap in the stones and nothing more. But sliding a hand deep inside revealed a second, wider gap behind the stone that was nearest the camp bed, and this was the cache where secrets and treasures too precious for common view could be kept.

If I show you this, it says something, Paul. Something larger than words. Something bigger than thoughts.

Paul reckoned there was enough room for the grenade within the cache. He’d placed his hand in there before, guided by Mr. Guy’s own hand with Mr. Guy’s reassuring words spoken softly into his ear: There’s nothing in there at the moment, I wouldn’t play a nasty trick on you, Prince. Thus he knew there was space for one fist clasped over another, and that was more than enough space for a grenade to occupy. And the depth of the cache was more than sufficient. For Paul hadn’t been able to feel the end of it no matter how far he’d managed to stretch his arm. He moved the camp bed to one side and he set the wooden box with its candle in the middle of the alcove floor. Taboo whined at this alteration in his environment, but Paul patted his head and fondly touched the tip of his nose. Nothing to worry about, his gesture told the dog. We’re safe in this place. No one knows about it now but you and me. Carefully clutching the grenade, he lay on the cold stone floor. He squirreled his arm into the narrow fissure. It widened six or so inches from the opening, and even though he couldn’t see far into the interior of the hiding spot, he knew where the second opening was by feel, so he anticipated no problem in depositing the hand grenade there. But there was a problem. Not four inches inside the fissure was something else. He felt his knuckles press against it first, something firm and unmoving and entirely unexpected. Paul gasped and withdrew his hand, but it was only a moment before he realised that whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t alive, so there was no reason to be afraid of it. He set the grenade carefully on the camp bed, and he brought the candle closer to the opening of the fissure. Problem was, he couldn’t illuminate the fissure and see inside it at the same time. So he resumed his former position on his stomach and slid his hand, then his arm, back into the hiding place.