“Shut up!” he said, waving the gun in the direction of the garden. “You have left me only one way. Get up. Go out through the glass door. Walk to the end of the garden. Slowly. Left-hand side. There’s a door in the back fence. Go through and follow the path. And don’t try anything, because I’ll be right behind you and I will not hesitate to shoot you in the back.”
Leonard did as asked, climbing slowly and awkwardly to his feet, a wave of nausea hitting him when he stood upright. All the time Matthew observed him carefully, obsessively, the gun pointed at his body. Leonard stopped at the door, placed a hand on the cold glass to steady himself. After a moment, Matthew prodded him forward with the barrel of the gun. Outside in the garden the cooler air filled his lungs and steadied him, sharpened his consciousness. Very slowly and a little unsteadily he walked ahead, but could hear Matthew’s footfalls behind. He had never checked the back fence of the garden, so had no idea what to expect. But just as Matthew had said, a gate of slatted wood stood behind one of the larger fir trees, already open. He stepped through, leaving the doorway open.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“I told you to shut up,” came Matthew’s voice, followed by the sound of the gate scraping closed behind them.
Leonard noticed brown earth marking out a path between the tall grass and bushes growing wild either side. When he trod forwards onto the route, he heard Matthew’s heavy breathing right behind him.
“Why are you doing this, Matthew?”
“You know why I’m doing this. Because with you gone, the house will pass to me.”
“I have no idea what kind of delusion you’re under, but if anything happens to me, everything passes to my mother.”
“And from what I saw at the will reading, she cares as much about Bryn Bach as your father. With you out of the way, she’ll give me what is rightfully mine.”
“Not if she finds out you’ve killed me.”
“She won’t. Nobody ever will.”
Leonard’s skin began to prickle. Had Matthew planned to get rid of him all along? Surely Adrian would think to come and look for him. He tried desperately to come up with ways to stall Matthew, but all he could think about was trying to stay alive.
“I don’t get it. If you wanted the house so much, why did you try to burn it down?”
“Because I wasn’t thinking straight. I worried that my brother had left behind lies about me, worried you might discover something incriminating. And I decided if I couldn’t have the house, then nobody would. I had no idea you were staying there that night. When I heard and found out you’d been lucky enough to survive, how a tragedy had been averted because what would have happened if you’d gone up in flames along with the house—well, let’s just say, the solution suddenly presented itself. There was a much better way to get what I deserved, what I needed, staring me in the face. My mother always told me that everything comes to those who wait. Well, now I’ve had the patience to wait for you to rebuild and redecorate, I’ll get a far bigger sum when I sell.”
“My friend is expecting to find me home. Any minute now. He’s driving back from Llandrindod Wells.”
“If I have to, I’ll deal with him, too.”
If Leonard needed any incentive to stay alert and alive, Matthew had just handed him one. He only hoped Adrian would notice the bloody handprint he had purposely left on the sliding door and realise the danger.
“You don’t have a clue about this area, do you?” said Matthew. “I bet you’ve never even ventured outside the house. If we keep to this path, we’ll end up at the Hughes farm. How about a history lesson to bide the time? A couple of centuries ago there used to be lead mining around this region, but the mines were abandoned long before Bryn Bach was built. Nobody’s even sure where the entrance used to be and only a few of us know there’s a sinkhole just off this path. We used to come here as kids. Goes down some sixty feet, by my reckoning. A sheer drop into darkness. Might even be full of water this time of year. How do you fancy a dip?”
Dismay washed over Leonard. His cousin had already thought this through.
Five minutes later and they had reached a curve in the path, surrounded and secluded by tall bushes, where the ground on the left of the path sloped gently down.
“Step off the path here, to your left, and keep going.”
Leonard staggered into the long grass where no path marked the way and, for another few minutes, kept moving down the incline. Eventually he reached a clearing with a much steeper slope. Almost immediately he spotted the edges of the dark hole in the ground, at least two metres in diameter. Somebody had tried to erect a knee-high wire fence around the perimeter, but time and the weather had knocked over most of the posts on one side. When Leonard stopped, Matthew moved to the left, around the rim of the slope, to where a cluster of evergreen bushes grew.
“Go to the edge of the hole and turn around to face me,” called Matthew, pulling Leonard’s phone from his pocket. “Good, stop just there. Now you’re going to put your password in this phone and unlock it. Then throw it straight back to me. And if you try anything stupid, Iwillshoot you.”
The phone landed on the grass by Leonard’s feet. He picked up the device and did as asked. What else could he do? On the display he noticed more missed calls from Mary but nothing from Adrian. Was this how everything would end? Just as his life had begun again? Once he had the phone unlocked, he lobbed the device back to Matthew. With one hand cradling the shotgun, and while constantly glaring up at Leonard, Matthew tapped a message into Leonard’s phone.
“There. Done,” he said with a grim smile. “Now as far as your friend’s concerned, you’ve decided to stretch your legs and get some fresh air, gone for a stroll to investigate the field behind the property. According to your message, you’ll be back soon. But, of course, you won’t. And one day they’ll find poor Leonard left the path and, tragically, fell into this long-forgotten sinkhole. Or, then again, maybe they never will.”
“You’re insane.”
“In debt, maybe. But I am most definitely not insane.”
A soft rustle of wind in the trees caught Leonard’s attention. Was his imagination playing tricks on him or did something dark move in the bushes behind Matthew?
“Put the gun down, son,” came a familiar calm but assertive voice, from a completely different direction.
Leonard turned his head towards the sound. PC Morgan stood there in full view with Adrian behind, appearing on the far side of the sinkhole. How had they known where to find them? Leonard had difficulty interpreting Adrian’s attention which was fixed on Leonard, and seemed to carry a mix of fear, despair and anger. In the meantime, Matthew had swung the shotgun around to point in the policeman’s direction.
