A Great Deliverance (37 page)

“Havers, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together.”

“There was blood. She’d used the brushes all over her body. He wrapped her up. He wouldn’t let go of her. He was crying. She said she was dead.”

“Christ,” he whispered.

“I went to the phone. He came after me. He—”

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“He pushed me outside. I fell. I’m all right. I … It was my fault. She came out of the bedroom. I remembered everything we’d said about her. It seemed best to be firm with her. I didn’t think. I didn’t realise she would—”

“Havers, listen to me.”

“But she locked herself in. There was blood in the water. It was so hot. There was steam. … How could she have stood the water that hot?”

“Havers!”

“I thought I could do something right. This time. I’ve destroyed the case, haven’t I?”

“Of course not,” he replied, although he was absolutely unconvinced that she hadn’t blown their chances right into oblivion. “Are they still at their flat?”

“Yes. Shall I get someone from the Yard?”

“No!” He thought rapidly. The situation could not possibly have been any worse. To have found the woman after all these years and then to have this happen was infuriating. He knew quite well that she represented their only hope of reaching the bottom of the case. No matter the reality that insinuated itself from the pages of Shakespeare, only Gillian could give it substance.

“Then what shall I—”

“Go home. Go to bed. I’ll handle this.”

“Please
, sir.” He could hear the despair in her voice. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t worry about it now.

“Just do as I say, Havers. Go home. Go to bed. Do
not
ring the Yard, and do
not
return to that flat. Is that clear?”

“Am I—”

“Then get a train back here in the morning.”

“What about Gillian?”

“I’ll worry about Gillian,” he said grimly and hung up the telephone.

He gazed down at the book in his lap He’d spent the last four hours dredging up from his memory every single exposure he’d had to Shakespeare. It was limited. His interest in the Elizabethans had been historical, not literary, and more than once during the evening he had cursed the educational path he had taken all those years ago at Oxford, wishing for expertise in an area that, at the time, had hardly seemed relevant to his interests.

He had found it at last, however, and now he read and reread the lines, trying to wring a twentieth-century meaning from the seventeeth-century verse.

He gives life and death meaning, the priest had said. So what did the words of the Prince of Tyre have to do with an abandoned grave in Keldale? And what did a grave have to do with the death of a farmer?

Absolutely nothing, his intellect insisted. Absolutely everything, his intuition replied.

He snapped the book closed. It was imprisoned in Gillian: the meaning and the truth. He picked up the telephone and dialled.

It was after ten when she trudged down the ill-lit street in Acton. Webberly had been surprised to see her, but the surprise had faded when he opened the envelope Lynley had sent. He glanced at the message, turned it over, and picked up the phone. After barking an order for Edwards to come at once, he dismissed her without a question as to why she had suddenly appeared in London without Lynley. It was quite as if she didn’t exist for him. And she didn’t, did she? Not any longer.

Who gives a shit, she thought. Who bloody cares what happens? It was inevitable. Fat, stupid little pig, snorting around trying to play the detective. Thought you knew everything about Gillian Teys, didn’t you? Heard her humming in the next room and even then you weren’t smart enough to figure it out.

She looked up at the house. The windows were dark. Mrs. Gustafson’s television blared from next door, but not a sign of life glimmered from the interior of the building in front of which she stood. If its inhabitants were disturbed by the neighborhood noise, there was no indication. There was nothing.

Nothing. That’s really it, isn’t it
, she thought.
There’s nothing inside, not a single thing and especially
not the one thing that
you
want to be in there. All these years you’ve been incubating a chimera, Barb. And what a bloody waste it’s been
.

She steeled herself against the thought, refused to accept it, and unlocked the door. In the quiet house the smell assailed her, a smell of unwashed bodies, of trapped cooking odours, of dead air, of ponderous despair. It was foul and unhealthy, and she welcomed it. She breathed it in deeply, finding it fitting, finding it just.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.
Here it is, Barb. It all began here. Let it bring you back to life
.

She put her handbag down on the splintered table next to the door and forced herself towards the stairs. But as she reached them her eyes were caught by a flash of light from the sitting room. She walked to the door curiously to find the room empty, the flash only a brief flicker of a passing car’s lights hitting the glass of the picture. His picture. Tony’s picture.

She was drawn into the room, and she sat in her father’s chair, which, along with her mothers, faced the shrine. Tony’s face grinned its impish grin at her; his wiry body twisted with life.

She was weary and numb, but she forced herself to keep her eyes on the picture, forced herself back to the deepest reaches of her memory where Tony still lay, wizened and gaunt, in a narrow white hospital bed. He was branded into her consciousness as he always would be, tubes and needles sprouting from him everywhere, his fingers plucking spasmodically at the covers. His thin neck no longer supported a head that appeared by contrast to have grown immense. His eyelids were heavy, crusted and closed. His cracked lips bled.

“Coma,” they had said. “It’s nearly time now.”

But it hadn’t been. Not yet. Not until he’d opened his eyes, managed a fleeting elf’s smile, and murmured, “I’m not scared when you’re here, Barbie. You won’t leave me, will you?”

He might have actually spoken to her in the sitting room’s darkness, for she felt it all again as she always did: the swelling of grief and then—blasting it away like a breath from hell—the rage. That single reality that was keeping her alive.

“I won’t leave you,” she swore. “I’ll
never
forget.”

“Lovey?”

She cried out in surprise, brought back to the shattering present.

“Lovey? Is that you?”

Past the pounding of her heart, she forced her voice to sound pleasant. No problem, really, after so many years of practise. “Yes, Mum. Just having a sit.”

“In the dark, lovey? Here, let me turn on the light so—”

“No!” Her voice rasped. She cleared her throat. “No, Mum. Just leave it off.”

“But I don’t like the dark, lovey. It… it frightens me so.”

“Why are you up?”

“I heard the door open. I thought it might be …” She moved into Barbara’s line of vision, a ghostly figure in a stained pink dressing gown. “Sometimes I think he’s come back to us, lovey. But he never will, will he?”

Barbara got to her feet abruptly. “Go back to bed, Mum.” She heard the roughness of her voice, and she tried unsuccessfully to modulate it. “How’s Dad?” She took her mother’s bony arm and firmly led her from the sitting room.

“He had a good day today. We thought about Switzerland. You know, the air is so fresh and pure there. We thought Switzerland would be the nicest place next. Of course, back so soon from Greece, it doesn’t seem quite right to go off again, but he thinks it sounds a good idea. Will you like Switzerland, lovey? Because if you don’t think you’ll like it, we can always choose someplace else. I want you to be happy.”

Happy?
Happy?
“Switzerland’s fine, Mum.”

She felt her mother’s bird-claw hand grip her arm tightly. They started up the stairs. “Good. I thought you’d like it. I think Zurich would be the best place to begin. We’ll do a tour this time, with a hired car. I long to see the Alps.”

“Sounds fine, Mum.”

“Dad thought so, lovey. He even went to Empress Tours to get me the brochures.”

Barbara’s steps slowed. “Did he see Mr. Patel?”

Her mother’s hand fluttered on her arm. “Oh, I don’t know, lovey. He didn’t mention Mr. Patel. I’m certain he would have said something if he had.”

They reached the top of the stairs. Her mother paused at the door to her bedroom. “He’s such a new man when he goes out for a bit in the afternoon, lovey.
Such
a new man.”

Barbara’s stomach turned on the thought of what her mother might mean.

Jonah Clarence opened the bedroom door softly, an unnecessary precaution, for she was awake. She turned her head at the sound of his movement and smiled wanly at her husband.

“I’ve made you some soup,” he said.

“Jo—” Her voice was so small, so weak, that he went hurriedly on.

“It’s just the tinned stuff from the pantry. I’ve some bread and butter here as well.” He placed the tray on the bed and helped her into a sitting position. At the movement, several of the deeper cuts began to bleed again. He took a towel and pressed it firmly against her skin, a movement not only to stem the flow of the blood but also to block out the memory of what had happened to their lives that evening.

“I don’t—”

“Not now, darling,” he said. “You need to eat something first.”

“Will we talk then?”

His eyes moved from her face. Slashes covered her hands, her arms, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. At the sight, he felt such a burden of anguish that he wasn’t sure he could answer her. But she was watching him, her beautiful eyes trusting, filled with love, waiting for his reply.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We’ll talk then.”

She smiled tremulously, and he felt his heart wrench. He put the tray across her lap, but when she tried to spoon the soup, he saw that her weakness had become so pronounced that no effort would make it possible for her to feed herself. Gently, he took the spoon from her and began to help her eat, a slow process in which every bit swallowed seemed an individual act of triumph.

He wouldn’t let her talk. He was too afraid of what she might say. Instead he soothed her with whispered words of love and encouragement and wondered who she was and what kind of terrible grief she had brought into his life.

They had been married for less than a year, but it seemed to him that they had always been together, that they had been meant for each other from the moment when his father brought her to Testament House from King’s Cross Station—a solemn little waif of a girl who looked twelve years old. She’s all eyes, he had thought when he saw her. But when she smiled, she was sunlight. He knew within the first few weeks that he loved her, but it took nearly ten years to make her his own.

During that time he had been ordained, had made his decision to be part of his father’s work, had laboured like Jacob in pursuit of a Rachel he could never be certain of winning. Yet that thought had not discouraged him. Like a crusader, he had set on a quest, and Nell was his Grail. No one else would do.

Except she’s not Nell, he thought. I don’t know who she is. And the worst of it is, I’m not certain I want to know.

He had always seen himself as a man of action, one of courage, a man powered by the force of his inner convictions, yet still, intimately, a man of peace. All that had died tonight. The sight of her in the bath—mindlessly lacerating her flesh, staining the water with her blood—had demolished that carefully constructed facade in two short minutes: the time it had taken to pull her, frail and screaming, from the tub, to try frantically to stop the bleeding, to throw the shouting police officer from their flat.

In two short minutes he had become not the cheek-turning, sincere minister of God that had long been his guise, but a maniacal stranger who could have killed, without impunity, anyone seeking to harm his wife. He was shaken to the core, even more so when he considered that, in protecting her from enemies, he couldn’t think of how he was going to protect Nell from herself.

Except she’s not Nell, he thought.

She was finished eating, had been finished, in fact, for several minutes and lay back against the pillows. They were stained with her blood. He got to his feet.

“Jo—”

“I’m going to get something for the cuts. I’ll just be a moment.”

He tried not to see the gruesome condition of the bathroom as he rooted in the cupboard. The tub looked and smelled as if they had been butchering livestock in it. Blood was everywhere, in every crevice and crack. His hands weakened as he grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He felt faint.

“Jonah?”

He took several deep breaths and went back to the bedroom. “Delayed reaction.” He tried to smile, clutched the bottle so tightly he thought it might break in his hands, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Mostly surface cuts,” he said conversationally. “We’ll see what it looks like in the morning. If they’re bad, we’ll go to hospital then. How does that sound?”