Death on Lindisfarne (24 page)

E
LSPETH APPEARED IN THE DOORWAY
, a green dressing gown wrapped round her voluminous figure. “Are you all right in there? Where's the fire?”

“There is no fire.” Aidan picked himself up off the floor. There would be more bruises to add to the ones Gerald had given him. “I needed to create a diversion.”

Lucy sat on the bed in her nightdress. He could see she was shaking. He picked her fleece off a peg and wrapped it round her.

“Hot tea. Or maybe something stronger.”

She had seemed such a fit, physical young woman. Now, with his hands on her shoulders, he felt her vulnerability. A tremor of surprise ran through him. He drew her closer.

“I've rung the police,” Elspeth declared. “Though goodness knows how they'll get here if that causeway's shut.”

“They'll call out the lifeboat to bring them, if it is,” Mrs Batley said over her shoulder. “They'd have to do that for the fire crew, anyway. But it'll be far too late to catch him. He'll have made himself scarce before any police get here.”

“He
was
the police,” Lucy managed in a small voice.

“It was him?” Aidan asked her.

She nodded against his shoulder. “They won't be able to prove it, though. He'll have seen to that. No DNA traces.” A long shudder ran through her. “He would have killed me if you hadn't come when you did. I'm only thankful he hates me enough to want to do it with his own hands. If he'd had a gun…”

Aidan stroked the hair from her face.

A sudden thought made him start. “Melangell!”

He took his hands away and dashed outside, past Elspeth and Mrs Batley.

The occupants of St Colman's were gathered on the lawn. Melangell rushed towards him.

“Daddy! Where
were
you? I couldn't find you.”

“Sorry, poppet.” He picked her up and held her close. “There was a nasty man in Lucy's room. I had to see to him.”

“Peter told me not to wait for you. He brought me downstairs. But there isn't a fire, is there?”

“No, honey. Thank you, Peter.”

The big archaeology student nodded silently.

“Somebody had better cancel the fire brigade callout.”

“Goodness me! It went right out of my head,” Mrs Batley cried. “We'll have that lifeboat out from Seahouses if we're not careful!” She hurried off to the house.

The others were subdued, still shocked by the sight of Lucy's attacker dashing past them into the dark. Gradually, they began to stir, but there was too much unexplained for them to start back for their bedrooms.

James's voice came out of the shadows on the lawn. “We should have known earlier what sort of person is leading this group.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Peter rounded on him.

Aidan put Melangell down. He stepped forward, stiff with fury. “Lucy's got enough to put up with, without this.”

They were interrupted by David Cavendish's voice from further down the verandah. “Well, I suppose we know now who killed that poor girl.”

Aidan turned towards him with a sense of shock. He had not for a moment connected what had happened tonight with the murder that hung over them all. Was it possible? Could Lucy's rejected partner have hated her so much he would kill the girl she cared for? Anything to get his own back on her?

He saw again the eyes glaring through the slits of the balaclava and shivered.

It was four o'clock in the morning before Lucy and Aidan had told their stories to the police sergeant and his female constable who came in answer to Elspeth's call.

“Lucky the tide was going out when we got the call,” the sergeant said. “It's always touch and go on Holy Island. Just as well we don't often get trouble here. They're a law-abiding lot. But on the downside, your man will have got clean away. If the causeway had been shut, we might have cornered him.”

“You're really sure it was Constable Parkinson?” the PC asked Lucy. “I mean, it was the middle of the night. You were asleep when he broke in, and you said he had a mask on. You never saw his face.”

“It was him.” Lucy shuddered. “But you're right. I can't prove it. He won't have left any evidence. And Aidan can't identify him.”

She fingered the bruises on her neck. “If Aidan hadn't come when he did…”

“We'll take him in for questioning, of course,” Sergeant Meldon said. “If we can get hold of the clothes he was wearing, there might be something. A hair of yours, if we're lucky.”

“You won't find the clothes. He'll have ditched them. He knows too much about how you work.”

“Then there's nothing more we can do here, I'm afraid. No chance of anyone seeing his car in the dark.”

“Was he here yesterday?” she asked quietly. “Making enquiries about Rachel's death?”

“We'll check that out. But if he's clever, he won't have stayed behind. Someone would have noticed. Easy to come back after dark, when the causeway opened again.”

He had come once. He could come again.

Aidan sat across the room from Lucy. He was disturbed by how much he wanted to cross that space and put his arms around her.

Suddenly his tired brain sprang to life. “Ask him to show you his back!”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“If it was him, then he should have a massive bruise across the small of his back. I threw a stool at him.”

Lucy turned to him. He was rewarded by the first flash of hope in her pale face.

Something was bouncing up and down on Aidan's chest. His eyes flew open. Melangell was shaking him.

He winced as pain caught him in the ribs. He struggled to sit up.

The memory hit him. Lucy struggling for her life under that almost obliterating shadow. The venom of the eyes that had turned on him beneath the black mask. His own helplessness against the hands that had seized him and hurled him aside.

“What time is it?” he said thickly.

“Quarter to nine. I'm hungry.”

Aidan groaned again as he shot his feet to the floor.

“Give me ten minutes. I need to shower.”

He let cold water flow over him, shocking him awake.

No time now for that early morning walk with his camera, drinking in the beauty of the island.

Would Lucy have been out on the run that was part exercise, part prayer time? His mouth twisted in a painful smile at her eccentricity.

No. The shock was sinking in as he towelled himself. A man she had once loved had tried to kill her. If Aidan had not woken up, their little community might be reeling now with the horror of another murder. He did not think Lucy would be running on the dunes alone.

There was a lesser shock as Aidan and Melangell came downstairs to breakfast. James and Sue were handing over their keys at the reception desk. Their bags stood packed by the door.

Words like “rat” and “sinking ship” flew through Aidan's mind.

“You're leaving early?”

James swung round on him. Aidan was struck again by the plaster on the side of his head, in the very same place as Aidan's own lump where Gerald had knocked him against the wall.

“I should never have allowed Sue to talk me into coming if I'd known the sort of sentimental twaddle this was all about. Next door to paganism. I'm going back to where the real Lord's work is.”

“It was my fault,” Sue said humbly. “‘Mission to Northumbria.' I thought it would be about planting churches in northern towns. Unemployed. Broken families. You know.”

“Do you think Lucy doesn't know that too? This is where she gets her strength to go back and do that.” Aidan was surprised at the vehemence in his own voice.

“She has some very strange friends for a minister of religion.”

“He tried to murder her! Is that her fault?”

“It was hardly a Christian relationship, was it? By the sound of it, they weren't married.”

Aidan turned on his heel and strode into the breakfast room.

Lucy raised her eyes to Aidan momentarily, then lowered them again. She had wrapped a white silk scarf around the bruises on her neck.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded.

He could have kicked himself for the inanity of the question. Of course she wasn't all right. The shock of the attempted murder was only hours away. The horror of it would haunt her all her life.

There was a moment's hesitation. Then he laid a hand gently on her shoulder. His grip tightened.

“Thank you,” she said in a husky voice.

He fetched a glass of orange juice and sat down beside her.

“Look. I don't know what you were planning, but you're not fit to be running a course for us this morning. Don't even think about it. Everyone will understand.”

“I was planning to do the Lindisfarne Gospels. How the book was made in St Cuthbert's honour.”

“Why don't I do it?” The thought took him by surprise. “I could. There's that great story about the monks putting it in his coffin when they carried his body away for safety. But a storm washed over their ship and the Gospel book was lost overboard. One of the monks had a dream. St Cuthbert had appeared to him and told him where it had been washed up. When the tide went out, they found it lying there on the sands.”

She managed a smile. “You know so many of the stories already, I don't know why you bothered to come.”

He took his eyes away from hers. He found the words hard to speak. “Let's say it's a family pilgrimage. Bringing Melangell to the places Jenny loved.” His voice brightened, and he lifted his head. “Honestly, I probably know more than you think about how these illuminated Gospels were made. The way they prepared the vellum from calf skin. The inks from lampblack, or red from insects living on Mediterranean oak trees. Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. Did you know that the left wing of a wild goose provides a better quill for a right-handed scribe?”

She gave a shaky laugh. “I think you've got the job. I've even brought some sheets of the designs for people to colour in with felt-tip pens.”