I reached the entrance and hesitated for a moment. Should I call inside? I decided it was better to just go ahead and try to find them. Pray that Lewis hadn’t done it yet. It was, I thought, a good sign that his car was still here. He hadn’t murdered her then headed back, pretending to tell everyone about the terrible accident that had happened.
I looked down at what I was wearing. Jeans and my wool coat. Hardly the right gear for going caving, but at least my Doc Martens were sturdy and had a good grip.
I went in.
Lewis hadn’t been lying about the caves being easy to traverse. I’d watched horror films in which people rappel into caves wearing helmets with torches on, descending into thedepths of the earth and commando-crawling through knee-high tunnels. This was nothing like that. The passage was broad enough for two people to walk side by side, and if I reached up I could just about touch the ceiling. I used the torch on my phone to light the way. It was damp and musty, with a strange mineral smell. It was also completely silent, apart from the faint sound of running water coming from somewhere ahead.
About twenty yards in, the passageway curved to the right and then forked. Shit. Which way was I supposed to go? I chose right, figuring this route seemed to lead deeper into the earth. Within a minute, I was confident I’d made the right choice because the ceiling was suddenly too low for me to walk forward. Lewis had told Jasmine about this, hadn’t he? Warned her there was one point you had to crawl through.
I got down on my hands and knees and crawled through the gap. Halfway through, I experienced a flutter of panic, imagining the ceiling collapsing, or both sides of the passage pushing together, trapping me, crushing me. That dreadful primal fear, making me paranoid, irrational. What if I’d actually chosen the wrong path and I was about to plummet off a ledge? What if I got stuck here? The passage was growing narrower and I had this horrible feeling that I might get stuck here, find myself going round in circles for ever, and that one day they would find my bones here. I could see it all, my imagination running away with itself, chest tightening, breathing quickening…
But then, thank God, the ceiling sloped upwards so I could stand again, and moments later I emerged into a cavern.
I stopped, mouth agape, taking it in. I was standing in a huge, open area about ten metres high. There was a ledge about six feet above me, with a hole in the rock face, presumably the entrance to another tunnel. Water trickled down thefar wall. And there, on the wall to the left, was the Serpent Stone.
It was smaller than I expected, about eighteen inches long. It was simpler, too: an undulating line carved deeply into the rock, clearly intended to represent a snake– or serpent. At one end, the tail curled into a spiral. At the other, a tiny forked tongue. There was something mesmerizing about it, despite its simplicity. Or perhaps because of its simplicity. It had been here thousands of years, and although I didn’t believe in magic or blessings, it did seem to exude some kind of power. The power to stir the imagination, perhaps. It was almost hypnotic.
I snapped out of it after a few seconds, remembering why I was here. The cavern was empty, with no exits apart from the small tunnel high above my head. There was something else, too, something it took my dazed mind a second to figure out. It wasn’t dark in here, and the light wasn’t only coming from my phone. It took another couple of seconds to identify the light source.
There were two flashlights lying on the other side of the cavern, close to the wall that had water trickling down its face. I hurried over. These were Lewis and Jasmine’s torches. There was a bottle of water sitting beside them. There was also Jasmine’s coat, and on top of the coat was Jasmine’s phone.
A metre beyond, in the direction of the water, was a drop, the floor suddenly disappearing. I moved towards it, slowly and carefully, and peered over the ledge, expecting to see the worst: Jasmine’s body, twisted and broken far below.
But when I looked, all I could see at first was water. A pool, about six yards across, black in the darkness. Water ran down the rock face into it, and I presumed there must be somewhere for water to exit at the same rate, otherwise this cavern would be flooded.
I grabbed one of the flashlights and pointed it at the pool.
There was something beneath the surface. I rubbed my eyes. Was it just a single dark shape? Suddenly, I was certain I knew what had happened. Lewis had pushed Jasmine into this water, drowned her, and he must have exited the caves before I got here. Maybe he’d been on his way out, heard me coming and hidden in the other passage that I’d passed. I didn’t know why he’d left his flashlight behind– perhaps that was part of his cover story.I panicked, had to get out to seek help; I wasn’t thinking.
Could there be a chance that Jasmine was still alive? And where was Lewis? His car had been parked outside and, unless there was another exit, he couldn’t have left since I’d got here.
I shone the torch left and right and saw that to the far left of the drop the rock sloped at a forty-five-degree angle. I studied it for a moment. I knew I could slide down it, but would I be able to get back up? Would the rock be too slippery? I had to give it a go. If there was the slightest chance Jasmine might be alive…
I took my coat off and set my phone on the ledge, thinking it would be better to keep it dry– I had no signal here anyway so it was little use– then, gripping the torch, slid down the slope to the pool, using the heels of my boots to control my descent. I reached the bottom, my soles touching the water, and shone the beam of the torch at the water again.
Oh Jasmine, I thought.I was too slow. I’m too late.
But I didn’t hesitate. I manoeuvred myself into the ice-cold water, gasping as it soaked through my clothes and hit my flesh. It only came up to the bottom of my rib cage, so I could stand easily. Stand and reach to grab the body in the water, to get hold of it and pull it up to the surface. I hadthe torch tucked beneath my armpit and the light skittered around the pit, bouncing off the walls and the surface of the pool.
I managed to pull Jasmine’s head and shoulders above the water. I twisted my body so the torch’s beam shone directly at her face.
But it wasn’t Jasmine.
It was Lewis.
Part Two
19
2006
Holly
Jimmy was so good-looking now that Holly actually found it hard to look at him. She had never thought she would fancy a boy with long hair. A lot of her friends liked old stuff like Nirvana and had posters of Kurt Cobain on their walls, but Holly didn’t see the attraction. That hairy, scruffy rock-star look did nothing for her.
Until she met the almost-grown-up Jimmy.
It was New Year’s Eve 2006. A few hours before midnight. She and Lewis had arranged to meet Jimmy and Morag in the village. From there, Lewis– who had recently passed his driving test– was going to take them to the manor house in his brand-new Mini, where they would have a few drinks before walking up to the caves to celebrate Hogmanay. However, when they got there Morag had her bike with her, which was too large to fit in Lewis’s tiny car, and she said she would cycle.
