13
I had known, from the moment Sam said he was planning chats with his three potential vandals, that there would be consequences. If Mr. Baby-killers was in there, he wouldn’t be one bit happy about being questioned by the cops, he would blame the whole thing on us, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he would let it lie. What I missed was how fast the strike would come, and how straight. I felt so safe in that house, I had forgotten that that in itself should have been my warning.
It took him just one day. We were in the sitting room, Saturday night, not long before midnight. Abby and I had been doing our nails with Lexie’s silver nail polish, sitting on the hearth rug, and were waving them around to dry them; Rafe and Daniel were balancing out the estrogen surge by cleaning Uncle Simon’s Webley. It had been soaking in a casserole dish of solvent for two days, out on the patio, and Rafe had decided it was good to go. He and Daniel had turned the table into their armory zone—tool kit, kitchen towels, rags—and were happily cleaning the gun with old toothbrushes: Daniel was going at the crust of dirt on the grips, while Rafe tackled the actual gun. Justin was stretched out on the sofa, muttering at his thesis notes and eating cold popcorn out of a bowl beside him. Someone had put Purcell on the record player, a peaceful overture in a minor key. The room smelled of solvent and rust, a tough, reassuring, familiar smell.
“You know,” Rafe said, putting down his toothbrush and examining the gun, “I think it’s actually in pretty good shape, under all the crap. There’s a decent chance it’ll work.” He reached across the table for the ammo box, slid a couple of bullets into place and clicked the cylinder home. “Russian roulette, anyone?”
“Don’t,” said Justin, with a shudder. “That’s horrible.”
“Here,” Daniel said, holding his hand out for the gun. “Don’t play with it.”
“I’m joking, for God’s sake,” Rafe said, passing it across. “I’m just checking that everything works. Tomorrow morning I’ll take it out on the patio and get us a rabbit for dinner.”
“No,” I said, snapping upright and glaring at him. “I like the rabbits. Leave them alone.”
“Why? All they do is make more rabbits and shite all over the lawn. The little bastards would be a lot more use in a lovely fricassee, or a nice tasty stew—”
“You’re disgusting. Didn’t you ever see Watership Down?”
“You can’t stick your fingers in your ears or you’ll ruin your manicure. I could cook you a bunny au vin that would—”
“You’re going to hell, you know that?”
“Oh, chill out, Lex, it’s not like he’ll do it,” said Abby, blowing on a thumbnail. “The rabbits come out around dawn. At dawn, Rafe doesn’t even count as alive.”
“I don’t see anything disgusting about shooting animals,” Daniel said, carefully breaking the gun open, “provided you eat what you kill. We’re predators, after all. In an ideal world, I’d love us to be completely self-sufficient—living off what we could grow and hunt, dependent on no one. In reality, of course, that’s unlikely to happen, and in any case I wouldn’t want to start with the rabbits. I’ve become fond of them. They go with the house.”
“See?” I said to Rafe.
“See what? Stop being such a baby. How many times have I seen you stuff your face with steak, or—”
I was on my feet and into a shooter’s brace, my hand grabbing at where my gun should have been, before I understood that I had heard a crash. There was a big jagged rock sitting on the hearth rug beside me and Abby, as if it had been there all along, surrounded by bright flecks of glass like ice crystals. Abby’s mouth was open in a startled little O and a wide cold wind swept in through the broken window, swelling the curtains.
Then Rafe sprang out of his chair and threw himself towards the kitchen. I was half a pace behind him, with Justin’s panicky wail—“Lexie, your stitches!”—in my ears. Somewhere Daniel was calling something, but I swung through the French doors after Rafe and as he leaped off the patio, hair flying, I heard the gate clang at the bottom of the garden.
The gate was still swinging crazily when we flung ourselves through it. In the lane Rafe froze, head up, one hand going back to clamp around my wrist: “Shhh.”
We listened, not breathing. I felt something loom up behind me and spun round, but it was Daniel, swift and silent as a big cat on the grass.
Wind in leaves; then off to our right, towards Glenskehy and not far away, the tiny crack of a twig.
The last of the light from the house vanished behind us and we were flying down the lane in darkness, leaves whipping under my fingers as I reached out a hand to the hedge to guide myself, a sudden burst of running feet up ahead and a harsh triumphant shout from Rafe beside me. They were fast, Rafe and Daniel, faster than I would have believed. Our breathing savage as a hunting pack’s in my ears, the hard beat of our feet and my pulse like war drums speeding me on; the moon waxed and waned as clouds skimmed past and I caught a glimpse of something black, only twenty or thirty yards ahead of us, hunched and grotesque in the strange white light and running hard. For a flash I saw Frank leaning over his desk, hands pressing his headphones on tighter, and I thought at him hard as a punch Don’t you dare, don’t you dare send in your goons, this is ours.
We swung round a kink in the lane, grabbing at the hedge for balance, and skidded to a stop at a crossroads. In the moonlight the little lanes stretched out in every direction, bare and equivocal, giving away nothing; piles of stones huddled in the fields like spellbound watchers.
“Where’s he gone?” Rafe’s voice was a cracking whisper; he whirled around, casting about like a hunting dog. “Where’s the bastard gone?”
“He can’t have got out of sight this fast,” Daniel murmured. “He’s nearby. He’s gone to ground.”
“Shit!” Rafe hissed. “Shit, that little fuck, that vile little—God, I’ll kill him—”
The moon was slipping away again; the guys were barely shadows on either side of me, and fading fast. “Torch?” I whispered, stretching to get my mouth close by Daniel’s ear, and saw the quick shake of his head against the sky.
Whoever this man was, he knew the hillsides like he knew his own hands. He could hide here all night if he wanted to, slip from cover to cover the way centuries of his rebel ancestors had done before him, nothing but narrow eyes watching among the leaves and then gone.
But he was cracking. That rock through the window straight at us, when he had to know we would come after him: his control was slipping, eroding to dust under Sam’s questioning and the constant hard rub of his own rage. He could hide forever if he wanted to, but that right there was the catch: he didn’t want to, not really.
Every detective, in all the world, knows that this is our best weapon: your heart’s desire. Now that thumbscrews and red-hot pincers are off the menu, there’s no way we can force anyone to confess to murder, lead us to the body, give up a loved one or rat out a crime lord, but still people do it all the time. They do it because there’s something they want more than safety: a clear conscience, a chance to brag, an end to the tension, a fresh start, you name it and we’ll find it. If we can just figure out what you want—secretly, hidden so deep you may never have glimpsed it yourself—and dangle it in front of you, you’ll give us anything we ask for in exchange.
This guy was fed up to the back teeth of hiding on his own territory, skulking about with spray paint and rocks like a bratty teenager looking for attention. What he really wanted was a chance to kick some ass.
“Oh my God, he’s hiding,” I said, light and clear and amused into the wide waiting night, in my best snobby city-girl accent. Both of the guys grabbed me at the same time, but I grabbed them back and pinched, hard. “How pathetic is that? Such a big tough guy at a distance, but the second we get up close and personal, he’s under some hedge shaking like a scared little bunny.”
Daniel’s hand loosened on my arm and I heard him exhale, a tiny ghost of a laugh—he was barely even panting. “And why
not?” he said. “He may not have the guts to stand and fight, but at least he has enough intelligence to know when he’s out of his depth.”
I squeezed whatever bit of Rafe was nearest—if anything could flush this guy out of cover, it would be that lazy English sneer—and heard his fast, savage catch of breath as the penny dropped. “I doubt there’s any intelligence involved,” he drawled. “Too much sheep in the bloodline. He’s probably forgotten all about us and wandered off to rejoin the flock.”
A rustle, too faint and too quickly cut off to pinpoint; then nothing.
“Here, kitty,” I crooned. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty . . .” and let it trail off into a giggle.
“In my great-grandfather’s day,” Daniel said coolly, “we knew how to deal with peasants who got above themselves. A touch of the horsewhip, and they learned their place.”
“Where your great-grandfather went wrong was letting them spawn at will,” Rafe told him. “You’re supposed to keep their breeding under control, the way you would with any other farm animal.”
That rustle again, louder; then a tiny, distinct click, like one pebble hitting another, very close by.
“We had uses for them,” Daniel said. His voice had a vague, abstracted note, the same note it got when he was concentrating on a book and someone asked him a question.
“Well, yes,” Rafe said, “but look what you ended up with. Reverse evolution. The shallow end of the gene pool. Hordes of drooling, half-witted, neck-less, inbred—”
Something exploded out of the hedge, only a few yards away, shot past me so close that I felt the wind on my arms, and crashed into Rafe like a cannon-ball. He went down with a grunt and a hideous thud that shook the ground. For a split second I heard scuffling noises, wild rasping breath, the nasty smack of a fist hitting home; then I dived in.
We went over in a tangled heap, hard earth under my shoulder, Rafe gasping for air, someone’s hair in my mouth and an arm twisting like steel cable out of my grip. The guy smelled like wet leaves and he was strong and he fought dirty, fingers groping for my eyes, feet jackknifing up and scrabbling to dig into my stomach. I hit out, heard a burst of breath and felt his hand fall away from my face. Then something slammed into us from the side, hard as a freight train: Daniel.
The weight of him sent all four of us rolling into bushes, branches clawing at my neck, breath hot on my cheek and somewhere the fast merciless rhythm of blows connecting with something soft, over and over. It was a vicious, nasty, messy fight, arms and legs everywhere, bony things jabbing, horrible muffled sounds like feral dogs worrying at a kill. It was three to one and we were every bit as furious as he was, but the dark gave this guy one advantage. We had no way of knowing who we were aiming at; he didn’t have to care, any blow that hit home was a good one. And he was using it, slippery and corkscrewing, tumbling the heap of us over and over on the ground, no way to get our bearings, I was dizzy and breathless and hitting frantically into thin air. A body thumped onto me and I lashed backwards with my elbow, heard a bark of pain that could have come from Rafe.
Then those fingers went for my eyes again. I felt out, found a roughstubbled jaw, got an arm free and punched with my whole body behind it. Something smashed into my ribs, hard, but it didn’t hurt; nothing hurt, this guy could have ripped me wide open and I would never have felt it, all I wanted was to hit him and keep on hitting. A small cool voice far at the back of my head warned, You could kill him, the three of you could kill him like this, but I didn’t care. My chest was a great burst of blinding white and I saw the final reckless arch of Lexie’s throat, I saw the sweet glow of the sitting room defiled with that jagged spray of glass, I saw Rob’s face cold and shuttered and I could have kept on punching forever, I wanted this guy’s blood filling my mouth, I wanted to feel his face explode into pulp and splinters under my fist and just keep going.
He twisted like a cat and my knuckles hit dirt and rock, I couldn’t find him. I grabbed in the dark, caught someone’s shirt and heard it rip as he shouldered me away. There was a desperate, heaving scramble, pebbles flying; a dull sick thud like a boot hitting flesh, a furious animal snarl; then running footsteps, fast and irregular, fading.
“Where—” Someone got a fistful of my hair; I beat the arm away and felt wildly for that face, that rough battered jawline, found cloth and hot skin and then nothing. “Get off—” A grunt of effort, a weight coming off my back; then, sudden and sharp as an explosion, silence.
“Where—”
The moon came out from behind the clouds and we stared at each other: wild-eyed, dirty, panting. For a second I barely recognized the others. Rafe scrambling to his feet with his teeth bared and blood shining dark under his nose, Daniel’s hair falling in his face and streaks of mud or blood like war paint across his cheeks: their eyes were black holes in the tricky white light and they looked like lethal strangers, ghost warriors from the last stand of some lost and savage tribe. “Where is he?” Rafe whispered, a low dangerous breath.
Nothing moved; just a coy little breeze flirting through the hawthorn. Daniel and Rafe were crouched like fighters, hands half curled and ready, and I realized I was too. In that moment I think we could have attacked each other.
Then the moon went in again. Something seemed to leach out of the air, some thrumming too high to hear. All of a sudden my muscles felt like they were turning to water, draining away into the earth; if I hadn’t grabbed a handful of hedge I would have fallen over. There was a long ragged breath, like a sob, from one of the guys.
Footsteps pounded up the lane behind us—we all jumped—and skidded to a stop a few feet away. “Daniel?” Justin whispered, breathless and nervous. “Lexie?”
“We’re over here,” I said. I was shaking all over, violently as a seizure; my heart was clattering so high in my throat that for a second I thought I was going to throw up. Somewhere beside me, Rafe retched, doubled over coughing and then spat: “Dirt everywhere—”
“Oh my God. Are you all right? What happened? Did you get him?”
“We caught him,” Daniel said, on a deep hard gasp, “but none of us could see a thing, and he got away in the confusion. There’s no point in going after him; by now he’s halfway to Glenskehy.”
“God. Did he hurt you? Lexie! Are your stitches—”
Justin was on the verge of panicking. “I’m totally fine,” I said, good and loud to make sure the mike could hear me. My ribs were starting to hurt like hell, but I couldn’t risk anyone wanting to look. “Just my hands are killing me. I got a few punches in.”
“I think one of them hit me, you little cow,” Rafe said. His voice had a giddy, light-headed note. “I hope your hand swells up and turns blue.”
“I’ll hit you again if you’re not careful,” I told him. I felt along my ribs: my hand was trembling so hard I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t think anything was broken. “Justin, you should’ve heard Daniel. He was brilliant.”
“Oh, Jesus, yes,” said Rafe, starting to laugh. “A touch of the horsewhip? Where the hell did that come from?”
“Horsewhip?” Justin asked wildly. “What horsewhip? Who had a horsewhip?”
Rafe and I were both laughing too hard to answer. “Oh, God,” I managed. “ ‘In my great-grandfather’s day . . .’ ”
“ ‘When the peasants knew their place . . .’ ”
“What peasants? What are you talking about?”
“It all made perfect sense at the time,” said Daniel. “Where’s Abby?”
“She stayed at the gate, in case he came back and—Oh God, you don’t think he did, do you?”
“I doubt it very much,” Daniel said. There was the edge of a laugh ready to burst through his voice, too. Adrenaline: we were all crackling with it. “I think he’s had enough for one night. Is everyone all right?”
“No thanks to Little Miss Spitfire,” said Rafe, trying to pull my hair and getting me in the ear instead.
“I’m fine,” I said, batting Rafe’s hand away. Justin, in the b
ackground, was still murmuring, “Oh my God, oh my God . . .”