The Sentence Is Death

‘This is my version of events,’ he said. ‘Gregory Taylor has been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is about as bad as it gets. He needs an operation or his brain is going to shut down. He’s broke, living in Yorkshire, but he has got one rich friend – Richard Pryce. The two haven’t seen each other for six years. They’ve barely spoken since the day they managed to get another mate of theirs killed, but even so, Gregory, urged on by his wife, gets it into his head that now, in his hour of need, Richard will help him.

‘Now let’s suppose what really happened was that Richard Pryce told him to sod off. I don’t know why, but somehow that scenario doesn’t seem to surprise me. Let’s imagine that on the Saturday afternoon when the two of them meet at Heron’s Wake – which is, incidentally, one of the stupidest names I’ve ever heard for a house – Richard says quite categorically that he won’t help, that he doesn’t want anything to do with Gregory and asks him to leave.’

‘But why would he do that?’ Davina asked. ‘Neither of them were to blame for the accident. There was an inquest. Richard and I talked about it. The two of them did what they could to save Charles. They could have got themselves killed. They didn’t see each other again because they were so upset about what had happened, but you’re making it sound like they hated each other.’

‘Maybe they did,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Because maybe they weren’t telling the truth about what really happened. And let me tell you this, Mrs Richardson. When people keep secrets, those secrets have a nasty way of festering. They can turn into poison. They can kill.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Hawthorne sighed and tapped ash. ‘We may never know what happened at Long Way Hole because the only three witnesses are dead now, and anyway it was all a long time ago. But I can tell you for a fact that the story Gregory Taylor and Richard Pryce told doesn’t add up. Their mate Dave Gallivan, the man who led the rescue attempt, knew it too. He went to the inquest but he decided not to raise his suspicions. The cause of death was clear enough and he didn’t want to upset anyone’s feelings.

‘But here are some of the questions they could have asked. One: your husband missed Drake’s Passage and continued into Spaghetti Junction, which was on higher ground. So why didn’t he just wait there until the floodwater had passed? It wouldn’t have been very nice, but he could have sat there for twenty-four hours until someone came and found him.

‘The bigger question is number two. According to the local farmer, Chris Jackson, it started raining heavily at four o’clock. He looked out of his window and he saw a little stream just outside the house. He called it a conditions marker. And at four o’clock it wasn’t a little stream, it was a gushing river, already spelling out death to anyone who was trapped underground. One hour later, there was a knock on his door and Gregory Taylor and Richard Pryce arrived with their tale of woe.

‘According to Susan Taylor – Gregory’s wife – he and Richard were trying to get out of the cave after the flood started. We know that they still had to cover another four hundred yards – which is about a quarter of a mile. But then they noticed that Charles had been left behind and being the heroes that they were, they fought their way back in. They looked for Charles. They shouted for him. But there was nothing they could do. They got out of the cave and went for help. Ing Lane Farm was almost two miles away and even though they must have been pretty exhausted they had to hike there on foot.

‘So let’s do the maths. Four o’clock the rain is gushing down. Let’s be generous and say they continued through the cave system for fifteen minutes before they noticed Charles Richardson was missing and so they would have had to spend fifteen minutes getting back in again. Let’s give them ten minutes looking for their friend. They give up and decide to go for help. It’s about thirty minutes to the exit. And how long do you reckon it takes them to get to Ing Lane Farm without a car? Shall we say another thirty minutes? That adds up to one hundred minutes. But Dave Gallivan at the local cave rescue team logs the call at five past five. That’s just sixty-five minutes after the flooding. In every sense, it doesn’t add up!’

‘I don’t understand,’ Davina said. She had been pulling heavily on the wine while Hawthorne talked. The bottle only had a couple of inches left.

‘There was no rescue attempt,’ Hawthorne said, flatly. ‘Whatever happened in Long Way Hole, nobody tried any heroics and Gregory and Richard both knew it. That was why they never saw each other again. Every time they looked at each other, they had to confront the truth.’

‘They killed Charlie?’

‘They left him behind. They didn’t even try to help him. So now let’s go back to Sunday the twenty-seventh. Gregory was desperate. Without the money for his operation, he was going to die. Richard threw him out. So what did he do?’