The Evil that Men Do (20 page)

‘Not that I heard. But I was getting worried, because I was afraid he'd found Jo. So I moved a little closer, and that's when I saw it.'

Alan waited. When the pause became extended, he said gently, ‘You can't stop now, you know.'

‘I know. I just  . . . well. I saw someone walking near the edge of the quarry, looking down. I saw  . . . him  . . . shout again, but the person never looked up. And then he started to run, and I'm not sure if he tried to grab the person, or pushed him, but the person fell, and he started to swear, worse than I've ever heard him before, and then he left.'

‘What did you do?'

Paul looked at his feet. ‘I went back in the bushes, and was sick.' He looked up to see if anyone was going to laugh at him. He was, I thought, still very young, poor boy.

‘And then I ran hell-for-leather to find my bike, and roared down into town, and ran into you, Mrs  . . . Dorothy.'

‘And all you could think of was finding Jo, or your mother, and we coerced you into having lunch with us,' I said. ‘No wonder you were a nervous wreck.'

‘I didn't want to be rude,' he said, betraying once more his extreme youth, ‘but I had to talk to Jo, and to Mum, and I was afraid he would see me. And then Mum wasn't home, of course, and I couldn't talk to her in the gallery, and I couldn't find Jo, and I couldn't think what to do. I was about half-crazy, I think. So I hitched a ride to Cheltenham, hoping I could find Jo.'

‘Did you phone her to make an appointment?'

‘Yes, but I only got her voicemail. And then I saw you near the racecourse, and I was afraid you were chasing me, or something, so I went back to Broadway and got my things and took off for Birmingham. There was the concert, and then this morning we were supposed to do a taping, but I tried calling Jo again and suddenly I couldn't stand it any more. So I rang up Mum and told her about Ben, and came here.'

‘And we know the rest.' Alan frowned and started to go on.

‘But Paul, you don't know the rest. We went to your  . . . is “
agents
” the right term?'

‘More or less.'

‘Well, everyone there was in a tizzy because no one knew where to find you, so we – well, I actually, dreamt up a scheme that would have the whole world looking for you. Or for Peter James, not quite the same thing. It was to be publicized everywhere, and the first person to find you was to get a prize of lunch with you.'

‘Oh, so that's what you meant  . . . but that could be  . . .'

‘Yes, it could be quite dreadful if this horrible man figures out who you are. I had no idea of course, but  . . .' I trailed off. I felt as though I had lit a very long fuse to a very large cache of dynamite.

‘You'll have to go into hiding, I'm afraid,' said Alan, ‘all of you.'

‘My daughters are quite safe, Mr Nesbitt. I would rather leave them where they are and not frighten them. They think I've simply given them an illicit holiday from school, and they're thrilled to be with Nancy.'

‘I'll need their address, please. As for the two of you  . . . have you any ideas?'

Sarah's sigh came from deep within her. ‘I hate to say it, Paul, but I think we're going to have to go back to the shelter.'

‘I'm not a child, Mum. They won't take me. And Jo  . . .' he struggled for a moment to regain his control ‘ . . . Jo isn't there to speak up for us. I have a better idea.'

So it was that Alan and I found ourselves, a couple of hours later, driving up to London with two passengers, elderly grey-haired ladies in charity-shop dresses. And if one of them had a slight five-o'clock shadow by the time we arrived at the Ritz, nobody appeared to pay any attention. The doorman had probably dealt with more unusual guests than this pair, and was as suave and unflappable as I had expected.

We saw them up to their suite, which was the last word in luxurious elegance.

‘Now you won't go out at all, right?' I said nervously. ‘You can have all your meals served in your rooms, and if you need anything, just call the concierge and he'll arrange to get it. I do feel terrible about putting you in this position.'

Sarah was pale, but holding up. ‘We're just lucky that my remarkable son can afford this sort of thing. When I think back  . . .'

‘Well, Mum, just hope it doesn't go on for too long. I'm not quite as rich as the Queen.'

‘One last time,' said Alan. ‘I hate to go on about it, but as I've asked at least twenty times already, can either of you think of any possible reason why your nemesis should have wanted to kill a perfectly harmless Gloucestershire farmer?'

‘He's mad, I think,' said Sarah. ‘I always thought he was near the edge. Now he seems to have gone over.'

Alan shook his head. ‘Even the mad live by logic, their own insane logic, but they do things for a reason. Well, if you think of anything, you know how to reach us. Day or night, remember.'

I gave Sarah a hug and Paul an impulsive kiss. ‘You're perfectly safe here,' I said, which must be one of the oddest tributes ever made to the impeccable luxury that is the Ritz. ‘And it's sure to be over soon. Try to get some rest.'

Alan stopped at the concierge's desk to give careful instructions about telephone calls. ‘No one except me, and I do mean no one. I'll identify myself with a number.' He wrote it down. ‘I'm trusting you with the lives of those two people.'

‘Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. We do quite often have very important guests, sir.'

Since the hotel had, in its many years of operation, probably housed enough celebrities to populate Texas, that was one of those wonderful British understatements that I cherish so.

We set out for home.

TWENTY-THREE

W
e were greeted by our next-door neighbour Jane and her bulldogs, and two sleepy cats. The dogs were voluble with welcome, sniffing ecstatically to learn all they could about where we'd been. Sam and Emmy woke briefly from their nap. Sam stretched, poking Emmy in the stomach with two stiff Siamese legs. Emmy reacted with some half-hearted feline profanity, and they both went back to sleep.

‘The silent treatment,' observed Jane. ‘Been abandoned. Won't warm up for a while.'

‘Abandoned, my foot! I'm sure you spoiled them rotten.'

‘Hate to see animals hungry,' said Jane gruffly, and changed the subject. ‘Didn't expect you home for another week, or did I get the dates wrong?'

‘No,' said Alan wearily, ‘you're right. And we're not really home.'

Jane cocked one shaggy eyebrow.

‘We were in London this afternoon, and this was so much closer than driving back to the Cotswolds,' I explained. ‘But we're off again after a night's sleep. That's if you don't mind?'

She just looked at us. Jane is a woman of few words. She is also the best friend and neighbour anyone could hope to have, and she adores pet-sitting our cats.

She didn't ask why we had been in London, or why we'd chosen to drive many miles in the wrong direction, if we were planning to resume our holiday. She simply cocked her head towards her own home next door. ‘Didn't get any food in for you yet. I've ham and salad and fresh bread. Could you do with a meal?'

It was bliss to sit in Jane's kitchen, stone-floored and cosy, with bulldogs nuzzling our feet and good, plain food in front of us. Jane poured some wine, and we talked about things other than fear and murder and madness. We waxed enthusiastic about the beauty of the Cotswolds, the charming villages, Sezincote House, and John Singer Sargent. Jane kept her peace, knowing we were talking too much about trivialities, willing to wait until we wanted to talk about the important things.

We were staggering with weariness when we finally got to bed, after the longest day I could ever remember. The cats decided, provisionally, to forgive us for our absence, and settled themselves comfortably on the bed, leaving barely room for us. It was heaven.

‘I'm glad,' I said with a mighty yawn, ‘that we're getting this little holiday from our holiday.'

My answer from Alan was a snore.

I had to struggle with my conscience next morning. It was a lovely May day, the beginning of the long Bank Holiday weekend. The roads would be clogged with holidaymakers heading to the chilly seaside, where the children could dig in the sand, or the pebbles, and the adults could either wear winter coats and be comfortable, or proper beach clothing and turn blue. Here in Sherebury it looked like being a warm day, not too hot, with perhaps a shower later on. The garden was beautiful, thanks to the efforts of Bob Finch, our devoted if sometimes drunken gardener. Alan had got up early and fed the cats, and they were back on the bed, purring. I wanted nothing more than to stay there with them, dozing and sipping tea and being lazy.

And in London, a mother and her son waited in luxury and terror, while in or around Broadway, an extremely dangerous man walked free, and a woman lay captive  . . . captive, or  . . . I wouldn't let myself consider the alternative.

I was out of the shower by the time Alan brought my tea.

‘Side roads, I think, love,' was Alan's only comment as we got into the car. There was no other decision to be made. ‘Less traffic, possibly.'

It used to amaze me how long it took to get anywhere in England. The whole country is only something like 800 miles from one end to the other. How could it take most of the day to drive a couple of hundred miles? That was before I understood the complexity of the roads, and the traffic.

America is laid out in a grid, more or less. We are a young country, whose aboriginal peoples travelled only on foot, and seldom more than a day's walk from their tiny villages. When the white man came, they laid out towns according to the compass, and when they started building roads, they built long ones, from one town to the next. Later highways were built for the purpose of carrying people and freight long distances as quickly as possible. I had a friend, years ago, who lived in northern Indiana, and when she visited me and my English friends asked where she lived, she said, ‘Not far from Chicago,' knowing they might have heard of that huge city. When pressed, she would admit that ‘not far' meant about a hundred miles. She never quite understood why the English greeted that remark with hilarity. Subdued, of course, but definite.

In England, the roads are organic. They grew out of the needs of the people. Foot traffic first, of course, then beasts of burden with wheeled carts. Paths became tracks, tracks became roads, eventually roads were paved and, in very recent history, motorways were established from one big city to another. But given the density of the English population, the motorways are often hopelessly clogged, and side roads  . . . well, the old doggerel ‘The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road' too often seems apt. My favourites are the euphemistically named ‘narrow roads with passing places'. That little phrase means that the road consists of one narrow lane, and if you meet another vehicle, perhaps on a blind curve, one of you must react in time to avoid a head-on collision, and one must back up until there is a small layby to pull in to, so that the other may pass.

Then there are the roundabouts. Don't get me started on roundabouts.

Alan does the driving. I'm great with a map; I navigate.

It took us most of the day to get to our holiday cottage. I looked at it with a jaundiced eye as Alan stopped the car in front of the house. The rain which had promised, in Sherebury, to be a gentle sprinkle, had been in this part of the country a downpour for the last hour. The drive was sodden and rutted; the house looked bleak and forlorn. I thought of our solid, beautiful Georgian house in Sherebury and suppressed a sigh as I got out and made a dash for the front door.

‘Are we out of our minds?' I asked my loving husband as we sat and sipped bourbon. He had built a fire, and the cottage was beginning to get warm, but it smelled damp, and there was nothing much to eat except cheese and limp biscuits and canned soup. I would bestir myself soon and put together a scratch meal. We certainly had no desire to go out into the drenching rain.

‘Probably,' said Alan. ‘We could be home in front of our own fire at this very moment. We could let the very efficient police deal with all the problems here.'

‘But we can't, can we? I can't, anyway. If that dreadful man found Sarah, Paul, and the girls, we'd never forgive ourselves for not trying to  . . . Alan, what's that noise?'

The back door was rattling. I'd thought at first it was the wind, but the wind died down for a moment, and the rattling continued. ‘Is someone trying to get into the house?' Despite my best efforts at control, my voice rose almost to a squeak.

Alan had the sense to grab the poker before he went through the tiny kitchen to the back door. ‘Who's there?' he shouted, his voice an intimidating roar.

The rattling became frenzied, and was accompanied by a barrage of barks and whines. I started to laugh. ‘A dog?'

Alan opened the door cautiously, and a bedraggled black and white creature crept in, belly low to the ground, tail between its legs. It looked up at Alan and whined gently, then shook itself vigorously, spraying water all over Alan, the kitchen floor, and everything else within range.

‘Well, old chap, where did you come from? Love, get me some towels, would you? The poor thing is freezing.'

He led the dog into the front room and knelt in front of the fire, holding out his hand. The dog, still uncertain of its welcome, licked his hand and tried a tentative wag of his tail. I brought towels, and the two of us managed to remove quite a lot of water, along with a great deal of mud, from the shivering animal.

‘He – is it a he?' Alan investigated tactfully and nodded. ‘He's not a very prepossessing specimen, is he?'

‘Not at the moment.' The dog's fur was matted and still very muddy. He still shivered in hard spasms, but he had uttered no more barks or whines. ‘Let's feed him, and bathe him, and then see what we have here.'