‘Not when you’re a fiend,’ Otis told her. She shuddered, and she wasn’t the only one.
I looked at Hugo. ‘Go on,’ I said.
‘I skirted around the vamps at the back of the building. There were several possible routes into Culcreuch Castle but I didn’t want to leave any trace of myself so I didn’t want to break through any of the windows or doors. I knew from my previous investigation when we time travelled that there was a tower. I headed there and used air magic to reach the top. A trapdoorled inside.’ Hugo smiled tightly, displaying not only a flash of his dimple but also a glimmer of satisfaction. ‘It wasn’t locked and it wasn’t warded.’
‘I knew it,’ I muttered. ‘IknewAthair’s over-confidence would let him down. You went in?’
‘You bet your sweet arse I did, Daisy.’ We grinned at each other.
‘There wasn’t much to find inside,’ he continued. ‘Some IKEA furniture but not much else of note.’
I blinked. ‘IKEA furniture?’
Hugo took out his phone and thumbed through the photos before holding it up.
Rizwan frowned. ‘That’s a Billy bookcase.’ He was right.
I could only assume that Athair had no interest in interior design; as functional and sleek as such furniture was, it was hardly in keeping with a medieval castle. I wondered if he’d assembled the bookcase and the other items himself; it was hard to imagine him with an Allen key in one hand and a set of instructions in the other.
Hugo went on. ‘I took care not to touch anything but I’ve got photos of all the books and papers that were on display. Let’s just say that Athair has eclectic tastes.’
I peered at the books: the memoirs of the Marquis de Sade were standing next to what appeared to be a volume of seventeenth -century love poetry. Uh-huh. Eclectic indeed.
‘One of the most interesting things was this.’ Hugo found another photo. ‘It’s a pinboard with a map of the British Isles on it. Several locations are marked with numbers. I have no idea what it refers to, but I took several photos.’
‘I’ll get a larger version printed tomorrow so we can examine it in more detail,’ Mark said.
I nodded. ‘What about the dead body?’ I asked quietly. ‘Where was it?’
‘In a dungeon at the bottom of the tower.’ Hugo passed his phone to Miriam.
She sucked in a breath. ‘Not just any dungeon. That’s a bottle dungeon.’ She looked up. ‘Also known as an oubliette. Essentially, it’s a hole in the ground that holds prisoners. There’s not enough room inside for them to lie down. Unless they possess incredible skills – or magic – there’s no escape.’
Any satisfaction had vanished from Hugo’s face. ‘There certainly wasn’t any escape for this poor man. I’m no pathologist but he must have been down there for a few years at least, judging by the decomposition of the body. There were some deep scratches in the stone walls that he’d probably made when he’d tried to get out. I couldn’t lower myself inside in case I became trapped too, but I saw enough from the top. That man didn’t have an easy death.’
His voice became quieter. ‘There was a lot of dried blood. I couldn’t risk disturbing the body too much – Athair mustn’t know that I broke into his home – but I took several close-up photos. There wasn’t much on the body to help identify him but he had dark hair and he looks human. Definitely Caucasian.’
Miriam squinted at the photos. ‘He’s wearing a football shirt.’
Becky leaned across. ‘Manchester United,’ she said. ‘It’s one of their older strips. If we can date the football shirt, we might pinpoint how long he’s been down there. It could help identify him.’
She sounded doubtful but Slim was enthusiastic. ‘Good call.’
‘What’s that?’ Becky asked, pointing at the same photo.
Miriam zoomed in on the image. ‘Some sort of signet ring. There’s a design on it.’ She twisted the phone around so we all could see it.
‘It’s a lion,’ Rizwan said. ‘Well, three lions to be exact. Lions are one of the national symbols of England.’
‘So between that ring and the football shirt, we can assume he was probably English.’ Hester frowned. ‘That narrows it down to – what? Thirty million possibilities?’
Hugo grimaced. ‘Far fewer if we focus on missing persons, but there’s still not a lot to go on.’
‘The ring might help,’ Rizwan argued.
Miriam nodded. ‘The least we can do is to try and find out who he was and discreetly let his family know what happened to him.’
I stared at the ring and wondered what its owner had done. What had made Athair throw him into an oubliette and leave him to die? Whoever that poor man was, he’d deserved better than that. Everyone did.
