The Lost Labyrinth

FORTY
I

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.