Will Adams - The Lost Labyrinth

It was him all right. No question.

Boots scuffed behind her. For the second time that morning, she looked around to see Iain standing there, the Mauser still slung over his shoulder. 'I knew it,' he said. 'I knew you'd found something.'

'But I only just did a moment ago,' she blustered. 'It was all those photos on his wall. I mean, how on earth could he have had them developed? No one does black-and-whites any more. So he had to have his own darkroom. Don't you see?' She spread her hands, aware she was blathering, unable to stop. 'And it had to be somewhere in the house, because of that vinegar we smelled. Acetic acid, you know. Developers use it as a fixing agent.'

Iain wasn't listening. He was staring in astonishment around the basement. Then he looked back at her, at the folder she was holding. 'What's that?' he asked.

'Nothing.'

He walked over and snatched it from her, throwing her a superior stare as he opened it. 'What the…?' he muttered, when he saw the photographs of himself. His complexion paled as he flipped through them, quickly at first, then more slowly, buying himself time to come up with some kind of story. But he must have realised it was useless. He let the folder and the pictures drop to the floor, then shook his head sadly at her, as though she only had herself to blame for anything that happened now.

Knox stood on the edge of the hillside and stared down. He could follow the grey ribbon of road through countless tortuous hairpins to the valley far beneath, where it straightened out and ran for miles before vanishing over the distant horizon; yet he couldn't see a single vehicle upon it. He'd hoped that someone might be coming the other way, that he could hitch a ride with them when they were forced to turn around. No chance. He got out his mobile instead, to try Gaille's number again or see if he couldn't somehow summon a taxi. But he was too high and too remote to pick up a signal.

Those options closed to him, he studied the road again. The irony was that he could probably make it past the road-works and the parked vehicles, but a landslide, presumably triggered by all this heavy machinery, had bitten a great chomp out of the road's underpinning just a little further on, leaving only a precarious slab of rock like a bridge to the other side, but with virtually nothing beneath to support it.

Knox stepped carefully out onto it. Even under his own modest weight, it seemed to bow a little. He measured its width at its narrowest point, then went back to the Hyundai. The road was perhaps a foot wider than the car; if it held, at least. He pulled a face, unhappy with his options. Apart from anything else, the car wasn't his, and he was puritanical about respecting other people's property. Besides, Theofanis was surely right: Mikhail was dead, and it was only paranoia to think he'd have arranged something malevolent before he died. And, even if he had, it wasn't as though Gaille was alone. Iain was with her, and he was no pushover. People often underestimated him, because of his boyish looks and fair hair, but-

Knox went cold. Belatedly, he realised why the figure in the hotel CCTV had looked so familiar. It had been Iain. He was sure of it.

It made up his mind for him, at least. He needed to get to Gaille now. He moved the barriers aside, got back in his Hyundai, put it into first gear and edged forwards, driving with painful slowness up and over a heap of hardcore, his undercarriage scraping rock, though too slowly to do any damage. He rode his brakes down the far side, letting gravity do the work. There was a pile of tarmac next, dumped against the cliff-face. It crunched beneath his tyres, setting off small cascades, tilting him at so steep an angle that he had to lean against his door. But finally he was over that too. He passed the earth-moving equipment more easily, his tyres still crunching from the accreted tarmac, then reached the narrow bridge.

He put on his handbrake and got out to inspect it once more. Even if it held, it was going to be incredibly tight. He got back in, steered as far away from the drop as he could, until his passenger side scraped the cliff-side. He hated causing such wilful damage, but he steeled himself and pressed on. He heard something crack beneath him and then the whole section of road he was on lurched perceptibly and began slowly to tip sideways like a ship being launched into the sea. It was too late to reverse back out, so he stamped his foot down and surged forwards. His front tyres bumped the far side and rode up it even as his back wheels sank behind him, his undercarriage scraping along the torn edge of the road. He stamped down even harder and his wheels span furiously, but then somehow they gained traction again and he spurted forwards onto the other side as the road fell away behind him in a furious avalanche of rock; but now he was hurtling too fast at the upcoming hairpin, he slammed on his brakes and hauled on his steering wheel with all his weight, throwing the Hyundai into a skid that brought him to a halt less than a metre from the edge, his engine stalling, the sweat pouring off him, fully aware of how close a call he'd just had.

He sat there a few moments to compose himself, then got out. The next stretch of road was scattered with debris from the landslide he'd just caused, but there was nothing he couldn't clear away or steer around. He took a tour of the Hyundai. His driver-side front tyre was buckled and flat, and the offside wing looked as though it had been shredded by some vengeful harpy; but he didn't need it looking good, he only needed for it to run.

There was no point wasting time changing his tyre or clearing the road until he'd found out the answer to that question, so he got back into the driver's seat, his heart in his mouth, and tested the ignition. Unknown things rattled, clanked and whirred within the bonnet, then died away again. He tried it a second and then a third time, without success.

But on the fourth it came reluctantly to life.

There was something uncomfortably vault-like about this basement, Gaille suddenly realised. If someone should die down here, and the trap door was sealed, their body might never be found.

'So I've been here before,' said Iain. 'So what?'

'You might have told me,' she said.

'Yes,' admitted Iain. 'Perhaps I should have. But it would only have made you suspicious, when there was nothing to be suspicious about. I mean, look at it from my point of view. When I started doing the research for my book, I found I was consulting the exact same materials as Petitier had already consulted. The exact same ones.'

'You got curious?' suggested Gaille, shuffling fractionally to her right, trying to open up a line to the doorway.

'Of course I got curious,' agreed Iain, stepping sideways to block her. 'Why wouldn't I have done? So the next time he turned up, I kept an eye on him. You should have seen him. Clapping his hands all the time. Cackling. I knew he must have found something good. It was obvious. What was I supposed to do?'

'Inform the authorities.'

'Of what? It's not illegal to do research, you know.'

'So you followed him?'

'He didn't make it easy,' nodded Iain. 'He was paranoid as hell. He kept stopping and getting out and glaring at the traffic behind him. It took me three goes, and I had to use a different car each time. Do you really expect me to have told you that straight out? I'd never even met you before. What if you'd got all holier-than-thou on me and insisted on going to the authorities? It could have killed my career.'

'I gave you the perfect cover, didn't I? A chance to come here and check this out, then blame me if it went wrong.'

'This is absurd, Gaille. You're being absurd. I didn't have to bring you here at all. I could have kept it to myself. You'd never have found out. No one would. But your friend was in trouble, and I thought I could help. Was that really so wicked? Anyway, how come it's okay for you to investigate, but not me? You think you're so special, don't you, you and Knox? You make a couple of lucky finds, and now you think you're entitled. Well I'm a Minoan scholar, I've spent my whole life studying places like these. What's your reason for being here?'