Untouchable (18 page)

‘If something happens to her, how do we get her out?’ asked Paulo.

Paulo didn’t normally worry like this, thought Alex. The cold and dark must be getting to him too. But all they could do was sit and wait. ‘At least down here we’re not likely to run into the gamekeepers,’ he said. ‘But this third man we’ve seen bothers me. Who is he?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Paulo. ‘I’ve got a theory. Those gamekeepers seem to have the run of the place. They can burn down a bothy if they want to. They broke down the front door of the hostel and if they’d shot us in there, there would have been a hell of a lot to explain. They didn’t seem worried that anyone would find out. They can do what they like on the laird’s land, they’re untouchable. And why? Because the laird is also in on it.’

Alex spoke slowly. ‘So you think the guy with the kilt that Hex saw – was the laird?’

Paulo nodded.

The pheasant pens looked like tennis courts, roofed over with netting. ‘Predators are a problem so we keep the birds in these pens.’ The laird’s accent had a faint trace of London’s East End, but in his blue-green kilt with walking boots and a rough armystyle jumper, he looked the part as he showed newly arrived guests around the shooting facilities.

Hex was staring at the laird’s kilt, until Amber nudged him to look at the birds. He glanced around. Birds scratched around the muddy earth floor, pecked at grain, shook the recent rain from their feathers and stared apprehensively at the group of humans watching them through the fence. Two middle-aged couples were also in the party.

Hex turned away from the pen. ‘That bird’s looking at your hat,’ he said.

‘Then he knows good style,’ replied Amber. She was still wearing the low-slung plus-fours and corn-coloured cap. Hex had rejected the plus-fours and gone for a checked shirt and distressed jeans. The ‘distressing’ was absurdly modest – a small hole on the thigh darned by a Jermyn Street tailor.

‘Hey, a fellow American? Where are you from?’

‘Boston, Massachusetts.’ Amber shook hands with the two couples. Their tweed skirts and trousers had knife-edge creases, as though they had only recently been taken off the hangers in the shop.

‘OK,’ called the laird. ‘That’s all there is to see outside. It’s time to go in and I’ll show you the gun store.’

He led the way with easy strides across the yard. They dodged round staff members going to and from the farm buildings. Earlier on the tour, the laird had shown them the feed room, with tall steel bins containing sweet-smelling grain, the fertilizer room, where drums of organic fertilizer stood bearing hazard stickers. Amber glimpsed other rooms as they went past: a workshop, a rest room with a kettle and mugs, a wet clothes room with a daily timetable for checking livestock. But one door remained locked. Its paintwork was just as scarred as the others’ so it was clearly used. Just not while people were watching, perhaps.

Hex was looking at the laird’s kilt again. He’d seen a lot of tartans that afternoon and he’d researched one in particular. A blue-green, like that one. It was a modern design, not a traditional one. A tartan made up for tourists who wanted a piece of Scottish history but had no real ancestral links. That suggested he was trying to fit in, like a chameleon. Was he the man who had tried to kill them? Hex had only caught a brief glimpse of him.

As they headed for the back entrance, a quad bike puttered into the yard. Amber saw the missing panel first, then the rider. The gamekeeper with the pockmarked face and the scar. She looked away quickly and seized Hex’s arm, nuzzling his ear.

Hex was startled, then heard her whisper, ‘They’ve found the quads.’

‘Would you just excuse me a moment, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the laird. He walked over to the gamekeeper, his kilt swinging.

Hex turned and murmured in Amber’s ear. ‘Let’s go.’ They walked into the lodge through a dark passage and emerged in the main entrance hall. It was an impressive space. The staircase was huge, like Grand Central Station’s, and edged with stone balustrading. Crimson leather sofas were clustered around a magnificent stone fireplace the height of a railway tunnel. One of the doors next to the fireplace swung open and a man in a butler’s uniform came through, a tray containing cocktails poised on one outstretched palm.

Amber and Hex had hoped to slip away on their own, but the other guests on the tour were following.

‘We’ve got to get rid of them,’ muttered Hex.

Amber let out a lascivious giggle and hooked her arm around Hex’s waist.

‘I think we should leave these young people to explore on their own,’ said a woman’s voice behind them.

Amber steered Hex up the stairs. ‘Perhaps see you later,’ chuckled one of the men.

On hands and knees, Li led Paulo and Alex down the tunnel with the drainpipe. She had found it joined up with one of the tunnels near the entrance – a much easier route than squirming through to the stalagmite cavern and up the shaft.

‘It’s quite long,’ said Li, at the front, ‘and eventually it goes into— Ah, here we are.’

She shuffled to one side and the others hunkered down beside her. The crevice above them let in light, so they switched off their torches to save the batteries.

Paulo knelt close to the drainpipe and sniffed it.

‘Don’t get high,’ said Li.

‘Diesel fumes. This is the exhaust pipe for the generator. They’ve been clever installing it near this pothole so they wouldn’t have to build chimneys. And this is their only ventilation hole, which is why they’ve kept the fumes contained in this pipe.’

Alex stood up and peered into the crevice where the drainpipe disappeared. ‘This is the factory?’

‘It must be,’ said Li. ‘It’s in the right place.’

‘I wonder how far this crevice goes.’ He switched his torch on and shone it into the hole.

‘Well?’ said Li.

‘Can’t see much . . . some bulky shapes, lots of glass pipes . . . It’s really close.’

Paulo tapped him on the shoulder, offering his mobile. ‘Take a picture.’

‘I would if I had very long, slim fingers,’ said Alex, ‘but I can’t reach down the hole.’

Li took off her rucksack and rummaged inside. She brought out a wire coathanger. ‘How about this? It got into my bag along with my Gore-tex jacket.’

‘Excellent,’ said Paulo. He straightened it out and handed it to Alex.

Alex made a rough cage for the phone and set it to take several frames on a timed exposure. He passed it gently through the crevice into the container. He slid it to the limit of his reach, then heard several clicks as it took the pictures. He pulled it back out, unthreaded the case and inspected the results. A slow, satisfied smile broke out over his face. He handed the phone to Li and Paulo.

The two friends gasped.

The pictures showed red walls with steel ribs; royal-blue drums; several items of glass, like a complicated laboratory. There was no doubt – this was the underground drugs lab.

Paulo was thinking. ‘You know what they do? I bet they bring the ingredients here inside the carcasses. When they get an order they take the finished product to the bothy to be counted and bagged, then transport it in a carcass to the coast.’

‘Why do they bother with the bothy?’ said Alex. ‘They could do everything underground.’

‘Ventilation?’ said Paulo. He squinted at the picture. ‘It looks very crowded in there. There must be a lot of dust when they’re measuring pills out. The bothy’s bigger, with better ventilation. Even there, we saw they had to use masks.’

Li nodded. ‘It’s very clever. Everything’s hidden – the factory’s underground and every time they move something it’s inside a carcass. No one need ever see anything unusual.’

Paulo looked at the picture on the phone. ‘But how long did it take them to build all this? Surely that would have attracted attention.’

‘Let me see that,’ said Alex. Paulo handed him the phone. Alex looked at the picture. ‘Ah yes, I thought so. They didn’t build it.’ He pointed to the steel ribs on the walls. ‘It’s one of those transcontinental containers, like they carry on ships and lorries. They must have dug a great big hole and buried it. Simple and quick.’

Li nodded. ‘That’s why we found such a big area when we paced it out with the metal detector.’

‘Those blue drums,’ said Paulo. ‘We found pieces of them in the bothy. They obviously contain the raw materials. I wonder where they dispose of them? They must have quite a collection.’

Li looked at her watch. ‘Ten minutes and we need to go to the surface to call the others.’

Alex looked at the pipe snaking into the factory. ‘This is a brilliant discovery, Li.’

Paulo nodded. His mind was already working. ‘If the others can find out when the pick-up is, there’s a lot we can do with this.’

Hex pulled back the portcullis on the lift and stepped out into a deep-pile crimson carpet. They turned down the corridor towards their suite. It was time to call the others.

The other lift in the pair arrived and they heard a rattling sound. The iron portcullis was stiff. There was also a voice – a rather distinctive one. ‘I’ve been abseiling, potholing, kayaking . . .’

Hex and Amber froze.

‘Really?’ said a male voice.

‘Oh yes. My horse bolted with me on the moors and I had to navigate off a foggy sea using just my compass.’

Hex looked at Amber with an expression of pure fear. ‘Tiff,’ he mouthed.

‘Wow, you’re a really adventurous girl,’ said the male voice.

‘She’s showing off,’ whispered Amber.

The portcullis finally snapped open.

Amber and Hex shared the same thought. They did not want to run into Tiff right now. Hex noticed a door-shaped outline running across the picture rail and down through the dado. It must be one of the secret servants’ entrances. As the voices came towards them he pushed it open. Amber practically pushed him through to get out of the way in time.

They were in a windowless stone stairwell lit by a bare light bulb, in marked contrast to the opulcnce they had just left behind. Sounds and smells of cooking wafted up from below.

Hex looked around, curious. ‘How the other half live.’

Amber pulled the door open a crack and peered back into the luxury world. ‘They’ve gone.’

They went back into the corridor. Their suite was just a few doors along.

Amber closed the door and locked it. Now, finally, they were alone.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Spluttered Hex. He unclipped the phone from his belt and waved it around, looking for the best signal.

Amber belly-flopped onto a massive four-poster bed. Everything in their suite was on a grand scale. Their two bedrooms were each the size of an entire apartment. ‘She’s changed her tune.’ Her voice shifted into Tiff’s nasal tones.
‘My stallion bolted, I navigated out of a sea fret using just my sense of smell.’
Amber’s expression was furious. ‘She hated every minute she spent with us. Now she’s a born again Lara Croft.’

Hex needed a stronger signal and moved to the window. It was starting to rain again. ‘We need to keep out of her way. She could blow our cover.’

Amber traced the pattern of the heavy brocaded bedspread with her finger. ‘If she carries on boasting like that, she’ll blow her own cover. If the gamekeepers hear her it’ll be obvious she was at the hostel.’

Hex had a horrible thought. ‘That day you rescued the dog and brought it here, she was with you. Did the gamekeepers get a good look at her?’

Amber thought. ‘Only as much as they noticed me. But we’re being careful, trying to stay out of their way. Tiff’s broadcasting what she’s been doing and where she’s been doing it. What if she starts spouting about our “night orienteering”?’ She looked at Hex. ‘Should we warn her? She could be in danger too.’

‘She wouldn’t believe us. We’re better trying to stay invisible. But she’s a time bomb.’

Outside, the hills were covered in a shroud of fine mist as the rain came in. Hex decided that was the best signal he was going to get and dialled.

Alex was ready for the call. He, Li and Paulo stood in the shaft at the entrance to the pothole. Li and Paulo sheltered from the rain while Alex stood in the open area in the middle so the satellites in the navigation system could see him. It wasn’t the only entrance, but it was the best place for staying out of sight in case there were people looking round the factory site.

Rain drummed on Alex’s hood, formed rivers around his feet. Above him, the leafy fronds of summer vegetation hung over the hole, heavy with water. It was like standing at the bottom of a well.

‘Hope you’re keeping that thing dry,’ was Hex’s opening line.

‘We gave it a couple of rides over the bumps in one of those narrow shafts. It’s got a few scratches. How’s life at the Ritz?’

‘Warm and dry,’ was Hex’s rejoinder.

Touché, thought Alex. Serves me right for trying to wind him up.

‘We lowered a camera into the factory and took some pictures. We think there’s a waste dump somewhere, full of blue barrels, which might be good evidence. We found the ventilation shaft to the factory, which we think will be useful. How about you?’

‘Not much yet. Except I was right about the quads having trackers. They found them.’

Alex let his breath out as a whistle. ‘Well, they obviously went looking for us pretty thoroughly. You guys be careful there.’

‘The laird’s definitely in on it. When the gamekeeper came back with our quad they went and had a quiet chat.’

‘We thought he was too,’ said Alex. ‘Anything else?’